Bleeding Out
by Mattk
Summary: The story you were warned about in Thunderheads on the Horizon begins as things start to go terribly, terribly wrong in the Blood Bond continuum.
1. Wound

It happened, as such things always do, with brutal suddenness.

----

"Last day of school, _and_ double-cheese pizza day!" Ron crowed as he sat down at the lunch table, his tray stacked high with slices of his second-favorite food. "It is a good day to be Ron Stoppable!"

"Cheese!" Rufus squealed in agreement, hopping onto the table and grabbing a slice.

"You know, girlfriend," Monique said, laying a hand on Kim's shoulder. "It wouldn't make you a bad GF if you fled the scene before it gets ugly. You have your own appetite to consider."

"No, it's okay, Monique," Kim said, deliberately focusing her attention on the other girl as Ron swallowed a slice whole. "We all make allowances and adjustments for the people we love." She blanched as Ron unhinged his jaw again. "I just haven't decided if I'm going to allow or ask for an adjust on this."

Monique nodded. That was wise. Which made her think that Kim's mother was probably the one who'd said it first. "So what're y'all doing this summer?" She asked, changing the subject.

"Well, we're going to cheer camp again," Kim began.

"At Wannaweep," Ron moaned, actually losing the rhythm of his eating for a moment. "We return to the place of eeevvillll."

Rufus whined in agreement.

"Ron, the last two times we've been there, you've been the one to save us. You keep saying that Wannaweep is the one place that you know the score, so why are you so scared of it?"

"Because sooner or later, my luck will run out," he answered grimly.

"Uh-huh, uh-huh," Rufus agreed, nodding with his whole body.

"The evil of Wannaweep is too great to be overcome." Ron finished.

Kim just looked at him for a second, then turned back to Monique. "Other than that, pretty much same old, same old."

"Freak-fighting, world-saving, naco-eating, and shopping at Club Banana?"

"That's the – " a familiar four-note beep sounded, and Kim pulled the Kimmunicator out of her backpack. "Go, Wade."

"Kim! You need to get out of there! Now!"

"What's the sitch?" She asked, rising from her seat. She'd rarely seen Wade look this frightened, not even when the Diablo had been trying to smash him. The emergency had to be dire.

"No time to explain, just run!"

Ron had already scooped up Rufus and started for the door. Monique, sensing their urgency, got up and started following them.

That was when the cafeteria's outside doors blew in off their hinges.

"Nobody move!"

Of course, everyone did. After a moment of stunned paralysis, the students of Middleton High, half-blind and –deaf from the blast, began a panicked, stumbling stampede for the exits.

That stampede was cut off before it could even really begin when red-garbed syntho-drones began to pour in through the doors.

"Nobody leaves!" A familiar voice called. "I want the princess to have plenty of innocent bystanders to worry about."

"Shego," Kim hissed, turning to face the hole in the wall where the outside exit had been, her fists raised.

So it was. Instead of entering like she usually would have, springing to the attack like a cat, the green woman strode in like a conquering general, flanked by a guard of syntho-drones. Drakken followed in her wake, looking even more cowery than usual. In fact, the blue scientist looked genuinely reluctant to be there.

Shego's hand was already flaming as she raised it and pointed at Kim. "Come quietly, Princess," She said, raising her other hand and pointing it in the general direction of the other students. "Or it's not just you who'll wish you had."

Kim stood her ground and said nothing, her mind racing. Her enemies had put innocents in danger before; that was part of what made them villains. They'd even taken hostages before – the occasion that stuck out in her mind was the time with the Seniors and the hypno-disco-ball, and the party full of European dignitaries. But she couldn't remember any of them ever actually using hostages against _her_. Not unless you counted Eric, which she didn't. Her hostage-sitch negotiation skills usually involved crawling through air vents.

A heavy, sour ball of fear settled in her stomach, although she kept her face steady. She didn't have a lot of options, and none of them were good. She might've actually considered surrendering, if she'd believed for a second that doing so would guarantee her classmates' safety.

"Tick-tock, Kimmie," Shego taunted, the fire on her hands flaring higher and spreading past her wrist. "No battle suit this time, so you can't return anything I serve at you. Of course you can dodge, like you always have before – " She grinned, a sharp-toothed grin, as malicious as a cat toying with a mouse. " – but I think your little friends might catch some shrapnel."

That was what Kim was afraid – no, terrified – of.

"What?" An indignant voice screeched suddenly.

Startled by the interruption, all heads turned toward the source of the voice.

Bonnie Rockwaller.

"You're telling me that this is all about her? My lunch got trampled and I got cement-dust in my hair and it's _all about her_?"

"Actually, you have promising careers as hostages and human shields in front of you," Shego said, turning her attention back to Kim. "But she's the only one here who actually matters. Now shut – "

_That_ did it. "I…don't…_think so!_" Bonnie shouted, swinging her leg up in a perfect cheerleading high kick into the chin of the syntho-drone in front of her. The drone's face was shoved halfway back into its head, and it staggered back a few steps.

In that moment, the students of Middleton High sixth period lunch realized two things that had already occurred to Bonnie: 1) the hulking figures blocking the doors held no weapons and 2) there were only a few dozen of those hulking figures against nearly two hundred of them.

With that, the rumble was on.

"What the hell are you doing?" Shego shrieked, turning fully toward the students and syntho-drones, her flame halfway up her forearms.

"Uh…Shego," Drakken said timidly. "Things are starting to get a little out of control, here. Maybe we should – "

"Maybe you should shut up," she snapped.

"Yes ma'am," He squeaked.

Ron took advantage of the distraction to flip a table up onto its side and pull Monique down behind the makeshift barricade. She went willingly. Kim ducked in with them.

"Okay, Ron, I'm going for Shego. You show the rest how to fight syntho-drones, and then _get them out of here_. Something's weird about Shego, and I don't want to take any chances."

"Gotcha, KP."

Grabbing a kiss for luck, Kim leaped out from behind the shelter and charged across the room, hoping that Shego would stay distracted. Within arm's reach, Shego's advantage was minimized; the fewer blasts she had to dodge the better.

----

"So how _do_ you fight syntho-drones?" Monique asked, huddling closer to Ron as the sound of explosions started to come from the other side of the table. She _so_ wasn't suited for this freak-fighting thing.

Lessons were very much needed. Despite their superior numbers, the fight wasn't going well for the Middleton High students. The syntho-drones were stronger and faster than human, and they were virtually immune to blunt trauma. The one Bonnie had kicked was back in the fight, its face back to its original shape. Brick had already landed several blows that would have left a human being out cold on the floor, all to no effect. He had now joined several of his fellow football players in trying to form a line of scrimmage, to open a way through to the doors by main force so at least some of their fellow students could escape. It wasn't working. Tara was dragging Josh Mankey away from the fight with the left side of his face bruising black and his eyes rolled back in his head.

"You fight them like this," Ron said, taking hold of Rufus's tail. The naked mole rat instantly went rigid, his limbs splayed. Then Ron drew back his arm and threw his friend like a shuriken.

----

If syntho-drones could hold grudges, then the one that Bonnie had kicked surely was. It was coming after her hard, and it was all she could do to avoid getting smashed like Josh had. She was ducking, dodging, and weaving, trying to avoid punches and kicks that were coming much faster than she would have expected from such a massive, bulky-looking thing, when something pink hit it in the face. The syntho-drone staggered back away from her, and for a second she had no idea what was going on. Then the pink thing sunk its claws into the syntho-drone's face and bit down hard, and she realized what had happened. Then a fountain of green goo erupted from the syntho-drone's ruptured mask, and she realized _why_ it had happened.

"Syntho-drone number seven-six-three will terminate operationnnnn"

She wasn't particularly happy that the green goo landed all over _her_, but she was too glad that her attacker was collapsing into an empty rubber suit to even complain.

She saw Rufus crawl out from under the fallen syntho-drone. Before he could attempt to scurry away through the surging brawl, she reached down and snatched him up. "Oh, get up here before you get stepped on, you gross little thing. I'm already covered in slime – you can't be any worse."

"Okay, okay"

Did that freaky little thing just talk?

No time to worry about that. As Rufus mounted her shoulder, she shouted to the rest of the cafeteria: "Cut them! We need to cut them!"

----

Kim had fought Shego dozens of times. Enough that she was pretty sure she'd learned the older woman's moves, her style. Shego had done the same with her, of course. That was why their battles were such intricate dances of feint, dodge, and block, with few blows truly landing – and the fight often ending with the first one. They were both master martial artists, experts at the science of causing devastation with each strike while avoiding being struck themselves.

It was also part of the reason that Shego had had so much trouble with Kim during the Diablo fight: with the battle suit, the girl hadn't needed to dodge her flaming hands; she could block and retaliate. The change in tactics had thrown Shego off.

Now Kim was finding out what it was like. The green woman's arms were sheathed in flame to the elbows, which was bad enough – more to dodge, harder to block. But worse, instead of the usual dance, the usual strategic chess-match, Shego was just trying to smash her. That could have been a benefit: Shego was using few of her moves, using far more blocks than dodges, just taking hits as they came in. The problem was that none of those hits, neither the ones she blocked nor the ones she just took had anywhere near the effect they should have. A kick to the face that should have ended the fight just bloodied her lip. A hit to the leg that should have paralyzed it made her stagger for a second or two. A hit to the stomach bent her double for about half a second. Worse, she was no slower than she'd ever been, but she seemed _much_ stronger.

Kim was entirely on the defensive. It was a bad place to be. Shego was backing her across the room, destroying furniture with each swing.

"So what's the plan this time, Shego?" Kim asked, ducking a flaming slash that took a chunk out of a concrete column on its way past. "Cloning me again? Did Drakken come up with something that wouldn't dissolve when somebody spills their soda on it?"

"No plan, Pumpkin," Shego said, drawing back her plasma-wreathed claw for a blow. Kim snatched up a tray and blocked it, but the tray was destroyed in the process. "Just payback."

Kim backflipped over a table, then flipped it up to put a wall between them.

"Oh, it would've been more fun if you'd come with us, given us time to work on you – "

Kim's blood went cold.

"But I'll settle for crushing you right here and now!"

She split the table in two with one slash and kept coming.

----

"Cut them! We need to cut them!"

Doug Rourke was one of the thugs of Middleton High. Truth be told, it was more menacing appearance and reputation than anything else. It was hard to be an actual thug in a school that contained both Steve Barkin and Kim Possible. Still, he was carrying something in the pocket of his black leather jacket that would have gotten him in serious trouble with _both_ of Middleton High's defenders if he'd ever even threatened to use it.

That was okay. He'd never really _wanted_ to use it. He just liked having his butterfly knife with him. It made him feel like more of a bad-ass. Seemed like the time had come, though.

He pulled the knife out of his pocket, flipped it open, and slashed at the nearest red-suited figure. He caught it on the arm, and it immediately began to spew something that looked like runny snot.

"Syntho-drone number eight five nine will terminate operrraaatiooo"

"She's right! Cut 'em! Cut 'em!"

----

For one brief, shining moment, the members of the Math Club – and the compasses they had in their backpacks – were heroes.

But just knowing how to hurt the syntho-drones wasn't enough. The syntho-drones were still stronger, still faster, still better fighters. The students were being driven back, scattered throughout the cafeteria. Dozens of them littered the floor – some unconscious, some injured and groaning. Ron had charged into the fray, but he wasn't nearly help enough – he still had to fight his way through to a Math Club member before he could even get his hands on anything sharp.

But there was one other factor that hadn't yet come into play.

----

Felix Renton had been in the bathroom when Shego had blasted her way into the lunch room – less than five minutes ago, though none of the participants in the desperate battle would have believed it.

It had taken a few moments to arrange himself and get back in his chair – his dead legs made things that would have been absurdly simple for his classmates more difficult than they suspected – but then he'd burst out of the bathroom at a full charge.

He'd needed to take to the air immediately, or he never would have been able to get through the stampede of students fleeing the lunch room area and the marching, red-suited…soldiers?

No. He joined the battle just in time to hear the shouts of "Cut 'em" and see several of the "soldiers" collapse into piles of green slop.

Good. No need to hold back, then.

----

A freshman named Ben Lear was bracing himself for the pain as a syntho-drone raised him up off the floor by his lapels and drew back its fist – then a steel claw burst out of drone's chest, dripping slime, and Ben fell to the floor.

Not taking the time to question the source of his good fortune, he scuttled away and looked for a table to hide under.

----

"Do you know how long it took to fix my hair after what you did to me?" Shego demanded, slashing again. Kim dodged. "Especially with what they've got available in prison?"

Kim dropped beneath Shego's next slash and swept her feet out from under her. "Don't GJ prisons have a men's wing?" She asked, coming back to her feet and taking a guard stance as Shego rolled and came back up. "You could have had some of your fellow inmates give you some conditioner."

"That's disgusting!"

"You set me up with a syntho-drone. I owe you."

----

Felix hit the lunch room like a storm front, his tentacles lashing wildly, slicing and puncturing syntho-drones with each pass. He broke the phalanx in front of one of the doors in seconds, and students began to pour out.

The syntho-drones, trying to obey their orders (and preserve their own existence, the prerequisite for successfully obeying said orders) tried to push the students further into the lunch room, but only succeeded in scattering the fight. The Bricks, Rons, Bonnies, Moniques, and Dougs of the school swarmed each syntho-drone under in groups of six or more, holding them down and stabbing the goo out of them with whatever sharp things they had at hand, while the Ben Lears made their escape.

----

Kim flipped over the serving counter into the kitchen, half-expecting Shego to simply smash through the steel and concrete barrier. But no, Shego flipped over it as well.

But before the fight could resume, they both heard the sounds of the battle change: cries of fear and pain changing to shouts of triumph; one syntho-drone after another announcing their termination; the hum of Felix's engines; Drakken shouting "Shego!"

"No!" Shego shrieked, hearing the sound of her victory slipping out of her fingers. She spun around and fired a blast that sheered away one of Felix's engines.

----

Felix worked his chair's controls grimly as he tried to pull it out of its spiral. It wasn't going to work. He was going to hit hard, and he'd be lucky if he came out of it with the same number of functional limbs.

Time to bail.

"Help!" He shouted as he unlatched his flight-safety belt. The chair spilled him on its next roll, and he tucked his head into his arms and waited for the pain as the floor shot up to meet him. Instead, two big arms plucked him out of the air.

"I gotcha, little buddy."

Felix had just enough time to look up and see Brick's face, cheerful in spite of its black eye, before a syntho-fist slammed into the side of his head and everything went black.

----

The syntho-drones, having recognized that Felix was the greatest threat to their continued functioning, did not compute that the threat had been neutralized. That threat needed to be _eliminated_. They tried to pull him out of Brick's arms, but the big boy simply hunched himself around the smaller one protectively and refused to let go, even though that meant he couldn't defend himself when they started to pound on him.

----

"_Yes_!" Shego hissed, unholy satisfaction replacing the frustration that had been in her voice a second before.

Then Kim hit her in the back of the head with a frying pan, and she dropped to the floor, making no sounds at all.

Kim dropped the pan – there was a soft thump and a semiconscious grunt instead of a clang – and started running. She didn't have time to waste on a personal duel right now. She flipped back over the serving counter and raced across the floor. Then, when she got close enough, she launched into a series of handsprings that carried her into – and through – the group of syntho-drones that were so determined to beat Brick and Felix to death. The drones scattered, thrown and flipped and knocked away. Swarms of other students fell on them before they could recover.

"Thanks, Possible," Brick gasped.

"No big, just – "

A scream of rage sounded from the kitchen, and the serving counter exploded. Shego strode through smoking ruins – the smashed concrete, the twisted metal, the glass that had melted and run like ice. Her flame was creeping past her elbows now, and – the hell? – her _eyes_ were glowing?

"Just get Felix out of here!" Kim shouted, pushing Brick toward the now-clear doors.

"Right! Good idea!"

He took off as Kim turned to face Shego, ready to start dodging blasts. Instead, Shego raised a blazing hand and pointed. "Get her!" She shouted. "I'm not playing duck hunt this time!"

The remaining syntho-drones – all seven or eight of them – broke off the fight and charged at Kim, obeying their new order. Kim leaped high to kick and spun low to sweep. She threw, she flipped, she dodged. Syntho-drones went flying in all directions, over and over again, but still she was in trouble. She had no means to hurt them, and syntho-drones didn't get tired. And if they caught her, Shego wouldn't have a moving target anymore.

Then, suddenly, one froze and collapsed in the midst of reaching for her. Monique stood behind it, her Club Banana clothes torn and the right side of her mouth badly swelled, but grinning anyway. One of the math club's compasses was in her hand, dripping syntho-goo from its pointy end. "I think I'm getting the hang of this freak-fighting thing," she said.

"Good," Kim said. "Because there's more of it to do."

And there was. The syntho-drones she'd just thrown were picking themselves up _again_.

"Possible!" A voice called.

Kim turned to face it. She knew Doug Rourke by sight and reputation, but no more. He was holding something shiny and rectangular in his hand.

"Catch!" He called.

The object flipped through the air, then smacked into her hand. She folded it open and grinned. "That's better," she said, settling down into a surprisingly competent knife-fighter's stance.

Just because she didn't choose to use certain skills often didn't mean she didn't have them.

The syntho-drones charged again…or tried. Many of the students had fled when Shego had turned her troops' attention away from them. But there were those who had not. As the syntho-drones did their best to obey Shego's orders, Kim slashed, Monique – and Bonnie! – stabbed, and the other students swarmed them under.

Then the ground and walls started to explode with green fire.

"No!" Shego shouted. "Not this time! You don't get away this time, not after that crack about conditioner! I don't care who I have to go through, you're going – "

Something hit her upside the head. Something hot and slimy, something that smelled vaguely like microwaved dog food.

"You can stop it with the pot-shots now!" A familiar voice called.

Some more of the dripping grey slime hit her, this time in the shoulder. This suit was ruined. It was in her _hair_, the stink would take _days_ to wash out. Hot grease dripped down her neck.

She could feel a roar, deep and guttural, starting deep in her chest as she turned toward her tormenter. "Rhhhaaa…"

----

Ron dug the ladle back into the pot of mystery meat that he had grabbed from the kitchen. Who knew this stuff would ever actually be good for something, even if it was just for chemical warfare? He saw Shego turning toward him and he raised the ladle for another throw…then dropped it again.

Actual fire was pouring from her eyes, and as she opened her mouth to roar, green light was rising up her throat.

"KP," he whispered in a voice that had no air in it. "KP, help. Sidekick in trouble."

"…aaaaaggh!" Shego raised her flaming arms.

Then something hit him, hard, and he was skidding across the floor and he hit something else and just before everything went dark, he could have sworn something _exploded_.

----

Someone was shaking him.

"Ron! Ron, wake up!"

"Mmmmdonwanna"

"Ron!"

"Fivemoreminutesmom…"

"Ron, please!"

"I can't go to school, mom, I'm sick, I have a headache…"

Then Rufus was tugging on his ear, squeaking "Kim! Kim! Kim!"

That woke him up. He sat up abruptly, nearly throwing Rufus. The sudden move nearly made him pass out again, but he closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, and the dizziness passed.

Then he opened his eyes, and wished he _had_ passed out again.

An entire wall of the cafeteria was gone. In its place, a huge pile of rubble sprawled out into the parking lot. Some of the cars had been smashed by debris, but others had been flipped over and thrown by the force of the blast itself.

----

"Come on, Shego! We need to go, we need to get out of here!"

Drakken was physically dragging Shego out the gaping hole in the wall, hoping that their hover-saucer hadn't been damaged by the blast. He'd never seen Shego put out so much power at one time – never imagined she could, actually. But it seemed to have cost her. Her fire was out for the first time since they'd landed, and she seemed dazed. What's more, she looked…different, somehow.

"What happened?" She asked. "What's happened here? What's going on?"

"We attacked and blew up a high school!" He shouted. "They don't send teenagers or Global Justice agents when you do that! They send men with machine guns and planes with bombs! We need to get out of here!"

Shego looked around at the damage, horror on her face. "_We_ did this?"

"Well, you did most of it, but that's not the issue right now…"

"_I _did this? My God, what have I done? Was anybody hurt?"

Drakken finally figured out why she looked different. For some reason, her eyes had turned brown.

No time to ponder that. He shoved her into the hover-saucer and leaped behind the controls. She was in no condition to drive right now. But he could answer her question.

"Yes," He said.

----

"Ron?" Monique was kneeling at his side – she was apparently the one who'd been trying to wake him up. She hooked an arm around his shoulders, helped him stay sitting up. "You okay?" She asked.

"I guess so," he said. "Where's – "

"Can you stand up?"

"In a second. Why?"

"We need your help, Ron – you and Rufus." She pointed at the pile of rubble.

"Kim is under there."


	2. Hemorrhage

Drakken pushed the hover-saucer as hard as it would go. He was fairly sure that they were over international waters by now, but they wouldn't really be safe until they were back on the island, in the lair – if even then. The planes with bombs had bombs designed specifically to deal with lairs hidden in caves these days.

Shego had been crying virtually the entire time. Under other circumstances it would have freaked him out, but one of them had to hold it together.

"Are you sure she's dead?" She sobbed for the third time.

"Yes," He answered shortly. He'd tried to be gentle before, and gentle hadn't worked.

"B-b-but h-how? D-dih-did y-you see h-her…"

"Her body?" Drakken finished for her. She winced. "They'll be lucky if there _is_ a body." The statement had the same effect as a slap in the face, which was what Drakken had been hoping for. Shego stared at him with her eyes wide and shocked, but her hysteria had been broken.

"But if you didn't see her body, how can you be sure?" She asked.

"Shego, I'm a mad scientist. I build weapons. Explosions are a big part of my job. And it is simply impossible that she – that _anything_ human standing in front of that blast – lived through it."

----

For the rest of his life, Ron would never remember how he got from where he was, crumpled against one of the cafeteria's remaining walls (_Is _that _what I hit?_) to the pile of rubble that Monique said Kim was buried under.

What he would remember instead was Monique's shock-shaky voice, telling him what had happened:

"You were already dead, boyfriend. I mean that. That crazy green bitch was goin' critical and there was no _way_ you were moving in time. But Kim did. I never seen anybody move so fast. One second she's with me, fighting the green goo guys, the next she's across the room, and she must've known she didn't have time to pick you up this time because she just kinda hit you or shoved you and you went flying and that's when the CGB went off. By the time we could see and hear again, the wall was gone, the CGB was gone, the blue guy was gone, and…and _Kim_ was gone! You have to find her!"

Monique kept repeating that last sentence, or variations on it. In her shock, she'd somehow gotten it into her head that only Ron could find Kim. It made no sense, but neither of them was in a condition to notice.

If Ron did, in fact, have some intuition about where Kim was buried (_and she _was_ buried yes she was not blown apart and scattered through the parking lot like the rest of the debris_), he didn't dare trust it. If Kim really was under there, she couldn't wait while he wasted time digging up a wrong guess. Not when he had a much more accurate way of finding her.

"Go, Rufus."

The naked mole rat leaped out of his outstretched hand and dove into the pile, squirmed through an opening between two cinderblocks, and was gone.

Then Ron started to dig anyway, dig randomly, just taking bricks off the pile and tossing them away. The less pile there was, the less Rufus had to search.

He had other memories of those terrible moments, but they were fragmentary, like flickers from a damaged film reel, or scenes from a randomly-skipping DVD:

_Skip_

Brick putting Felix down – at Felix's frantic insistence – and wading into the rubble, tossing away bricks and cinderblocks, levering up slabs of concrete.

_Flicker_

Students and teachers fleeing the school – except some are running _toward_ the rubble, unwise as that is. Mr. Barkin. Zita. Others.

_Skip_

Bonnie closing her cell phone – was it even possible that no one had called 911 yet? Well, the more the merrier – and taking a place at Tara's side, scraping their perfectly-manicured hands raw pulling bricks and cinderblocks out of the pile and throwing them away.

_Flicker_

Wishing desperately that Felix's chair was still functional, wishing for the strength of its robotic tentacles as he tugs uselessly at a chunk of roof. Thinking for a moment that his wish has been granted when two very similar tentacles latch onto the piece of debris and flip it away, then recognizing the Wade-bot.

_Skip_

Josh Mankey staggering out of the hole in the cafeteria wall, stumbling drunkenly, the left side of his face grotesquely swollen, needing to be forcibly pushed away and sat down beside Felix so he doesn't do himself further injury while trying to help.

_Flicker_

The sound of sirens.

_Skip_

Rufus appearing out of the pile, chittering and screeching, jumping and waving. All of them rushing over to him, pulling, digging, throwing, sweat dripping from their brows and blood dripping from their fingers. Finally, a section of wall that had somehow stayed in one piece, all of them straining, grunting, growling, then the Wade-bot anchors itself to the ground and pulls and

_Freeze Frame. Still photograph. _

And it's Kim.

And she's

Shattered.

When Ron Stoppable gets his words back, that is the word he will use. But for now there are no words. There is no world. The people standing beside him – some of whom scream, or cover their eyes or stagger away looking for someplace to vomit or faint or all of the above – cease to exist. Even the sound of the sirens fades into the silence of an empty planet. There is only the scene before him, this image of perfect horror in ice-crystal clarity, this image that will stick in his mind like a splinter and feed his nightmares for the rest of his life.

The left side of Kim's body looks barbecued. Her face has been spared the burns – perhaps her arm was in front of it, still stretched out with her body at full extension to push him out of the way – but it has not been spared the glass. She must have been blasted through a window, because the right side of her body is a web of glass-cuts, dripping blood into the concrete dust. Her limbs are skewed from her body at angles that nature never intended, and the white of bone peeks through here and there. Worse, her body itself is twisted in ways that, limber as she is, simply should not be possible.

Only the tiniest whisper of sound and motion sullies the perfect stillness of this snapshot in time: the liquid rasp of Kim's breathing, and the fine red mist that settles on her lips.

Ron drops to his knees, ignoring the pain as they hit the bricks, and reaches out for her. He still has no words – his mind has been reduced to reds and blacks, the purest of primal grief, despair, and rage. He wants to gather his mate into his arms and howl.

Then a big hand slaps into his chest, holding him back, shattering the moment and its screaming silence.

"Don't even _think_ of touching her, Stoppable," Mr. Barkin's gruff voice orders. "There's no way her spine is in one piece. You move her, she never moves again."

_Pause. Reset._

The world comes back with a rush of sound and begins to move at its normal speed again.

----

Steve Barkin took a firm grip on the blond boy's shoulder and prepared to either physically haul him away from Possible or defend himself against hysterical resistance. God knew he'd had to deal with both before.

Not this time. Stoppable apparently didn't need the proverbial slap in the face. The will he'd demonstrated at Wannaweep asserted itself, and he pulled himself back from the brink on his own.

"But…she's…we need to do something!"

"You've already done more than anyone could've hoped for, Stoppable," Barkin said. "Now all we can do is stand back and let the paramedics do their jobs."

Obeying Mr. Barkin's insistent tug, Ron climbed to his feet and stepped back. As if that was some sort of signal, the paramedics in question swarmed into the area, concealing Kim from view and shouting things Ron didn't understand.

"Can I go with her?" He asked in a small, lost voice.

Mr. Barkin shook his head. "I've seen them let the boyfriend ride along before," he said. "But I don't think they want anyone in their way this time."

A slim brown hand settled on Ron's other shoulder. "Come on, _m'ijo_," Zita said. "I'll get you there."

"Mr. Stoppable, if I let go of you…"

"I won't do anything crazy, Mr. Barkin. I promise." Ron didn't look at Mr. Barkin as he spoke. His eyes didn't move from the paramedics as they worked on Kim.

Mr. Barkin released his grip, waited a moment to make sure that Ron would keep his word, then nodded at Zita.

"Come on, Ron," Zita said, tugging gently at his shoulder. "_Vamonos_. We can meet them there."

"No…wait…just a minute."

Zita knew very well what "just a minute" meant. Ron wouldn't move from the spot or even look away until Kim was out of his sight. She wasn't quite sure what to do about that. She didn't want him to see any more than he'd already seen. It could do him nothing but harm. But would dragging him away be any better, even if it was possible for her to do so?

Then it became a moot point. The paramedics lifted Kim up off the ground, strapped to a backboard, and rushed her to an ambulance that was waiting at the edge of the blast zone.

Ron flinched when the doors of the ambulance slammed, then watched it drive away until it was out of sight. Only then did he allow Zita to lead him away.

Steve Barkin watched them go. He noticed that Bonnie Rockwaller and Brick Flagg were leading that Monique girl away in the same way that Ms. Flores was leading Stoppable. That was good. Possible's two best friends shouldn't be alone right now. He had no doubt where they were going – they had a _lot _of bedsides to visit and friends to check up on, a lot more than just Possible's – but they were in no condition to get themselves there.

It was only as he watched them led away that he realized that neither of them had asked _THE_ question.

Neither had asked if Possible was going to be okay.

----

Ron Stoppable walked numbly through a landscape from a nightmare, gently navigated by the girl he'd once bought tickets to every show in the Middleton Multiplex for. From. Not that _she'd_ asked him to, but…

No, really. A nightmare. Granted, most of the dreams he'd had about the school getting blown up were actually _happy_ dreams, but friends and innocent people didn't get hit by the flying pieces in those dreams.

Maybe that's what this was, a dream. Maybe he would wake up any second, in math class, Barkin yelling at him and Kim sitting next to him, looking disappointed but _okay,_ and he would be so happy that he'd hug Kim first and Barkin second.

"Ron?"

"Uh?" Ron turned his head and saw a sight that reinforced his dream theory. But then, the Wade-bot always made him think that.

"Hey, Wade. Thanks for the help. How did you get the Wade-bot over here so quick?" His words were no different than they would have been at another time, but they were dull and lifeless, as if he was reciting them by rote.

"I sent it as soon as I lost contact with you," Wade answered automatically. "But forget that. Ron, what happened?"

"I was hoping you could tell _me_ that, dude. Last I heard, Drakken and Shego were still in a GJ jail."

"They blasted their way out this morning. Shego's become a lot more powerful somehow – "

"I kinda noticed that."

"And they caused so much damage on the way out that it took hours for Global Justice to dig themselves out and re-establish communications. By the time they got the warning to me, Drakken and Shego were breaking every air-traffic law ever written on their way to you guys. I guess they were going for speed over stealth."

"Hey, whatever works," Ron said. But what Wade said made sense. Real-world sense, not dream-logic. So much for the Dream Theory. He looked around, and the Theory crumbled further. There were details here that he would never dream.

Students wandering around in shock, but the paramedics too busy with the injured to even offer a blanket.

Tara hovering anxiously by while a paramedic examined Josh Mankey's damaged face.

Felix slapping a paramedic's hands away, shouting, "Stop poking me! Of course I can't feel my legs! I haven't been able to feel my legs since I was four!"

That was too much. The paramedic's ignorance and Felix's indignation struck a spark of poisoned hilarity that Ron had no defenses against at the moment, not here in his nightmare.

He started to laugh. High, screamy laughter that he couldn't control or stop. His face turned brick-red and tears ran from his eyes. He wrapped his arms around his aching sides and his throat went raw, but still he couldn't stop. He bent over, then dropped to his knees, still laughing. His laughter was starting to sound more like sobs, and he was going to wet his pants any second now, but he still couldn't stop.

"Ron? Ron!"

He felt something poking at his knee while something else grabbed and shook his shoulder. That broke him loose, at least for a second. He opened his eyes to see Wade, Zita, and Rufus watching him worriedly. Rufus had been the poking, Zita had been the shaking.

"Ron," Wade said slowly. "You're scaring us."

"Sorry, Wade," Ron chortled, wiping his eyes. "I just…it was…'stop poking me'…oh, I'm gonna feel so bad for laughing later."

"Don't worry, _m'ijo_," Zita said as she helped him to his feet. "I don't think that Felix will mind." She glanced at Wade as she started to lead Ron away again. "I think you better talk to Ron later, kid."

"Yeah. I think you're right."

----

Dr. Colleen Possible raced toward the emergency room, along with virtually every other doctor in Middleton Hospital that wasn't actually in surgery. The ones off-duty but on-call were on their way.

She didn't know what was going on. None of them did. All that any of them knew was that _all _of the ambulances had been dispatched, and a _lot_ of patients were incoming. Had it been some sort of mass pileup on the highway? A fire in an apartment complex?

She'd find out later. Right now, there were people who needed help, and that took precedence over everything else. Just like it did for her daughter.

Someone stepped out in front of her and she nearly crashed, but she managed to sidestep and keep going – or she would have if the person hadn't grabbed her.

"Excuse me – oh, Donna, it's you. I – "

"You can't go down there, Colleen."

"Donna" was the head of the hospital, Dr. Donna Richardson. She was one of the few people who could tell Dr. Colleen Possible what she could and could not do, but Colleen was more than a little surprised by this order.

"But I thought the ER needed all hands."

"They do. In about five minutes, the place is going to look like a field hospital in a war zone. But you can't go down there. You won't be able to help."

Colleen stared at her quizzically. "Why in the world not? What are you talking about?"

Dr. Richardson told her. When she finished speaking, Dr. Possible agreed: her concentration would be far from the task at hand if she went down to the emergency room. And her hands were shaking far too much to be of any use with an Ace bandage, let alone trusted with a scalpel or stitches.

----

Ron Stoppable had been wandering the halls of Middleton Hospital for hours. The doctors and staff were long-since used to him, so he was mostly left to his own devices. If it had looked like he was about to wander someplace private or dangerous (whether it would be dangerous for him, or dangerous for a patient if he wandered in), he might have been stopped. But it never did.

Of course, during the first few hours, everyone was so frantically busy that Dr. Drakken himself, wearing a neon sign and using a loudspeaker to announce "Hi, I'm Dr. Drakken, Mad Scientist and International Super-Criminal", could have gone wherever he liked.

Zita had been with him for those first hours. They'd mostly hung out around the ER, waiting to find out how their friends and classmates were doing. Not well, of course, but just how badly they were doing varied.

Monique, Brick, Bonnie, and Tara had all been treated and released. In Monique's case, she'd been sedated first. For a time, the doctors had wanted to keep Brick for the night, under observation for a concussion (as they were doing with Felix). Except, well…he didn't have one. Apparently, the boy was as hard to hurt as his namesake. Tara had actually lingered for a time after being released, keeping her boyfriend company.

He needed it. Josh Mankey was among the worst-injured of the victims of the attack on Middleton High School – after Kim, of course. He _did_ have a concussion. A bad one. Hours after the fight he was still seeing three of everything, though no one was sure if that was because of the concussion itself, or the damage to the orbital bone around his left eye, which was going to need surgical repair. On top of all that, it looked like he was going to have his jaw wired shut for about half the summer. Tara stayed until visiting hours ended, then left with the promise that she would return as soon as they began the next day.

Zita's parents came to get her at some point in those hours, and she offered to take Ron home. He declined, saying he was looking for someone.

Now, hours into the evening, he finally found them sitting on a padded bench in what looked like a random section of hallway but which probably wasn't.

"Hi, Mr. Dr. P. Mrs. Dr. P."

----

Kim's parents looked up at him. He'd been at the Possible household before when one or the other of them came home from a long, hard, overtime day of work. He'd seen them tired. But they looked more than tired, now. They looked _weary._ They looked drawn and pale, except for their red-rimmed eyes (Ron was surprised to see that Mr. Dr. P's eyes were almost as red as his wife's, though he supposed he shouldn't be).

They looked _old_.

"Hello, Ron."

"Ronald."

"I guess it would be stupid to ask how you're doing," He said.

Mr. Dr. Possible snorted, though not in a bad way, and Mrs. Dr. P actually smiled. It was a bleak, terrible smile, though, and Ron wished that she hadn't.

"We've been better, as you can imagine," Mr. Dr. P. said at last.

"Where are the twee – Jim and Tim?" Ron asked.

Both Ron and James Possible winced. Ron at his mistake, James to hear a word that should, by all rights, have come from Kim.

"They're staying with your parents tonight," Colleen Possible answered. "They're really worried about you, you know."

"The twins?"

"Your parents."

"I called and let them know that I was safe here."

"They're still worried about you. They'd have come to pick you up if it weren't for the boys."

"Then they'd have to stay here with me," Ron declared. "I'm not going home yet."

"We know," James Possible said. "And we also know that you aren't even thinking about us or the boys right now, so why don't you ask what you really want to know?"

Ron looked down at the older man and realized just how exhausted that man was. The bluff, good-natured, absent-minded Mr. Dr. P was gone. He'd been scraped away, revealing the bare metal beneath. This was James Timothy Possible, Kim Possible's father and Nana Possible's son. He had no time or strength left for "how is your family?" – or anything else but truth.

So Ron Stoppable asked the question that he'd spent all these hours trying not to even _think_ about:

"How's Kim?" He asked. "Has anyone told you anything?"

Mrs. Dr. Possible nodded. "They don't want to," She said. "But none of them are good enough to keep anything from someone who knows all the dodges and stalls."

"So…?" Ron prompted. "And…?"

"She's going to live through the night," she said dully. "That's the good news."

All of the strength went out of Ron's legs, and he dropped onto the bench beside them. "That's the good news."

"The cuts were bad, the burns were worse, the broken bones were catastrophic," Colleen Possible said, reciting it like lines from a monologue that she'd been running through her head over and over. As Ron was sure she had been. "And the internal damage nearly finished the job. Kidneys, lungs, spleen – she hardly has anything left that isn't ruptured, punctured, or bruised. But even that's not the worst of it."

Ron sagged in his seat. "It's not?"

"No," she said, her voice breaking. She paused, closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and then continued, her voice tightly controlled. "The worst is her spine, Ron. It's not a question of whether or not she's going to be paralyzed, but whether she's paralyzed from the waist down, from _here_ down – " She leaned forward and touched her own back a little below her shoulder blades. " – or if she's going to be completely quadriplegic."

"But that only becomes an issue if she wakes up," James finished grimly.

Ron could only stare, wide-mouthed. No wonder their eyes were so red, and no wonder they were so emotionally blank and exhausted now. He gave them total props for retaining their sanity this long.

He could hear Rufus crying from his pocket. Not the imitation-crying that the mole rat used to express sadness or disappointment to the humans around him, but genuine whimpering.

Ron could understand his little buddy's reaction, but he couldn't cry himself. Wanted to. Couldn't. It was too big for him to get his head around. He'd known that KP was terribly, terribly hurt – hadn't he seen it himself? – but he'd never imagined that a human body could suffer such total devastation and continue to function.

"People can live through amazing things," Colleen Possible said, as if she knew exactly what he was thinking. "And Kimmie is tougher than most. Still…" She left it hanging.

Still, Kim Possible – cheerleader, martial artist, skier, swimmer, world-saver and bon-diggity dancer, a girl who only needed a little help to fly – was going to spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair, if not actually in a bed. It was almost worse. Imagining a world without Kim was beyond Ron Stoppable's abilities. Imagining Kim so completely _broken_ – he couldn't do that, either. And he didn't ever want to. But it looked like he'd better get used to the idea.

They sat in silence for a long moment, then James spoke up again: "So now we've answered your question, Ronald. Now it's your turn."

Ron tensed. "My turn?"

The older man nodded, and the look on his face was still James Timothy Possible, not Mr. Dr. P. He knew it was going to hurt all of them, but he still needed the truth.

"What happened, Ronald? No one will tell us. No one _can_. I don't think anyone knows. The only ones who _do_ know are a bunch of kids who are mostly either in shock or sedated or both. That leaves you."

"That leaves…me."

"It does."

"Yeah…"

Ron took a deep breath, rose to his feet, and began pacing. This was what he _had_ been thinking about during the hours that he'd wandered the hospital, trying not to think about how Kim was doing.

He felt sick. He didn't want to tell them this. Not now. Maybe he didn't want to tell anyone ever. But they deserved to know.

He took another deep breath. "How much do you know already?" He asked. "Anything?"

"We know that Drew and Shego attacked your school," Mr. Dr. Possible said. "But that doesn't explain what went wrong, why Kim got so badly hurt when she never has before."

Ron took a third deep breath. Count three before the plunge.

"_I'm_ what went wrong, Mr. Dr. P."

----

Both Doctors Possible stared at him, wide-eyed.

"Oh, Ron," Mrs. Dr. Possible whispered. "What do you mean?"

"I think you'd better explain yourself. Quickly." Mr. Dr. – no, James Timothy – Possible said. His voice was stern. The sudden, terrible rage in his eyes hadn't made it to his voice. Yet.

Ron told the story of the invasion of Middleton High. He told of the battle with the syntho-drones: "Dr. D finally grew enough of a brain to use actual troops – he must've brought in every one Global Justice didn't find." He told of Shego's prodigiously increased power: "She was breaking _landscape features_ every time she took a swing!" And he told of the final moments, when Shego had taken advantage of Kim's reduced mobility to target her with that power.

"So I realized that I needed to do the usual sidekick thing and distract Shego, so I grabbed the first thing that came to hand: a tub of mystery meat that got thrown across the room when she blew up the serving line. It still had a ladle in it, so I grabbed that and started throwing hot slop at her."

"Not a bad idea," James said.

"Right," Colleen agreed. "Grease burns are no joke."

"Well, as a distraction, it worked pretty well," Ron said. "She turned away from Kim, and toward me, and she was _pissed_. She was lit up like your house at Christmas time, and she was _roaring_. I was about a second away from being sidekick _flambe_' when something hit me."

"Kim," James said tonelessly.

"That's right, Dr. P. She hit me _hard_, so I don't remember a lot of the next minute or two, but Monique tells me that Kim somehow managed to get across the room from where she was fighting the syntho-drones and knock me out of the way…but that meant that suddenly _she_ was in front of Shego instead of me."

He stopped in front of them, gave a shuddering sigh, and dropped his head, as if awaiting their judgment. "Kim rescued me, just like she always does. Just like I always depend on her to. I even – I even called for her, I said: 'KP, help, sidekick in trouble'. I don't know if she even heard me, I don't think she did, but I said it, and she saved me, but this time she couldn't save herself, so now she's…she's…" He swallowed hard. "I'll go now," he said. "You probably don't want me here."

He turned and started to walk away.

"Ronald."

Ron turned back, wondering what they could possibly want from him.

Both Doctors Possible were looking intently at the floor, both apparently pondering what he'd said. They glanced at him, then each other as he turned back to them.

"You'd better do it, dear," Mr. Dr. Possible said dully, turning his eyes back to the floor.

Mrs. Dr. Possible nodded and sighed, then got to her feet. She crossed to Ron, reached out –

And slapped him. Hard. Like punch-from-a moodulated-Kim hard. It lit up his entire jaw like the flashing lights on a test-your-strength carnival game and sent fireworks rocketing through his head. Ron staggered and almost fell. He pressed a hand to his wounded cheek and stared at blankly at the woman who'd always seemed like an endless font of patience to him, his eyes and mouth hanging open. He'd expected her to be angry, maybe even hate him. But violence? That seemed kinda OOC.

"Huh. Maybe _I_ should've done it," Mr. Dr. Possible said, still seated on the bench. "You might've put a bit too much English on that one, honey."

Mrs. Dr. Possible didn't answer. Instead, she addressed Ron: "There," she said. "Now you've been punished. Did it make you feel any better?"

Ron, still staring in mute shock, shook his head.

"Did it accomplish anything?"

He shook his head again.

"Good. Remember that. We don't want you doing anything stupid. Like punishing yourself."

He tried to answer, but his brain seemed frozen by shock and amazement. His language centers seemed to have locked up or something.

"Kim – " Suddenly, her calm cracked and her voice broke. "Kim saved you for a reason," She said. "She felt that you were worth risking her own life for. She valued – values – you that highly. You don't get to turn around and prove her wrong by giving up."

"Giving up?" Ron stammered. "No, that's not what – "

"It had better not be!" Colleen Possible shouted. "Because my baby chose you over herself, and I'm not going to let you or anybody else act like that was an accident or a mistake! She chose you because she loves you – just like I would do for James, or my sons, or for her! I can't tell you how much I wish it was _me_ in that bed right now, but it's not. It's her. And she's going to need you, if and when she wakes up, and _you are going to be here_."

The last six words were punctuated by hard jabs of her finger into Ron's chest. He shied from the pokes, then turned back to her. "Of course I am," He said. "I always wanted to be. I just didn't think – "

"No," She interrupted. "You didn't think at all, did you?"

With that, she turned and stormed off down the hall, wiping furiously at her eyes. Ron watched her go, stunned, then looked over at Mr. Dr. Possible, who was looking up at him mildly.

"What just happened?" He asked plaintively.

"She's angry at you," The older man answered. "_I'm _angry at you."

A harsh chattering came from the pocket of Ron's cargo pants, along with several hard pokes. He looked down to see Rufus glaring up at him.

"Looks like Rufus is angry at you, too," James Possible observed. "Doesn't mean any of us love you any less."

Ron blinked and stared down at James Timothy Possible, who was still too tired for anything but truth. Then his legs unlocked and he sat down hard on the floor.

"Love?" He asked blankly.

"You've been part of our family for a long time, Ronald. What was going on between you and Kimmie just solidified that."

"But…then…why?"

"Because of what you _said_, Ronald. Not what you _did_."

"But I didn't mean…"

"I know, Ronald. And in a few minutes, she'll be back to apologize. But I – and probably she – will still be pretty insulted that you'd think we'd actually be stupid enough to blame you for this."

"Wha – huh?"

"Anybody who lays any blame on you for what happened today is an idiot. Which is what you're being, which is part of the reason we're angry at you."

Ron's head hurt from more than just the slap now. "Uh, Cliff's Notes? Please? Not getting all the references."

James Possible sighed and leaned forward, looking the younger man square in the eye. "You and Kim lead very dangerous lives. Maybe we should have put a stop to that when you started fighting crime instead of rescuing cats from trees. Believe me, that's something we're blaming _ourselves_ for right now. Sometimes. But then, Kim could have gotten this hurt in a car accident, or she could have broken her neck just as easily falling from a pyramid in cheerleading. And she wouldn't have done near as much good in the world." He paused. "I don't think either we or your parents have told you two nearly often enough how proud we are of you." The last words were choked, and his eyes were glistening. Ron said nothing, and after a moment, James continued:

"And during all of this time, all of your missions, you've rescued each other back and forth until you've probably both lost count. Haven't you?"

Ron nodded.

"Then this could have happened to either one of you at any time. In fact, it _has_. Did you think that we never noticed you limping, the day after a mission? Or reaching for things with your left arm, or wincing when you laughed?"

Ron shifted uncomfortably. It seemed that all of that effort he'd gone to to keep the 'rents from worrying had been pretty much wasted. "Well, I kinda hoped so."

James Possible raised an eyebrow at him.

"Which was another insult to your intelligence."

"That's right. So Kih – " He choked, and took a moment to regain his voice. When it came back, it was very strained. "So Kimmie was the one of you who finally ran out of luck and got seriously hurt rescuing you. All the more reason for you to be here when she wakes up, so she'll know that she succeeded."

He seemed to be finished. Ron slowly dropped his eyes to the floor.

Possibles. Just when you thought you knew them. He took a deep breath, tried to put on his widest, brightest, can-do smile; failed, had to settle for bleak certainty; looked back up into James Possible's eyes.

"Sounds like a plan," He said.

"Glad to hear it, son. But we need your head in the game."

Ron didn't even think about the fact that James Possible had just called him "son". It seemed like the most natural thing in the world.

"It will be," he promised.

"Good," A warm, rich, weary voice said behind him.

Ron was on his feet in an instant, spun about to face the returning Colleen Possible.

"Is it out of the way, then? Do you have it out of your system?"

"Yes, ma'am, Mrs. Dr. Possible," Ron said, holding up his hands in exaggerated defensiveness. "No more need to be punished here."

She actually laughed then, a laugh that was soft and sad, but genuine. "I'm glad," she said. Then she reached out and – gently! – touched the cheek where a red impression of her hand still lingered. "Oh, Ron," she said. "I'm so sorry. You didn't deserve that."

"No," He said. "But I think I maybe kinda needed it."

She nodded, then pulled him into a hug. "Whatever happens," she whispered, "I don't want to ever hear you blaming yourself for this again."

There was so much in that statement. So much Colleen wanted to say, about how much Ron had meant to them over the years, how happy he'd made Kim, how many times he'd saved her and how brave he'd been, how he'd done everything right and they'd just run out of luck. But in the end, all that she could say was that one sentence.

They held each other like that, for a long moment, in silence. She was weeping again, softly, into his shoulder. He wished he could cry, too. Wanted to. Couldn't.

The hug felt wonderful anyway.

After the moment passed, they sat down beside Mr. Dr. Possible on the bench.

And they waited.

After a time, the exhaustion of the day began to claim Ron, and he found himself slipping sideways, leaning his head on Mrs. Dr. P's shoulder. Then he slid further down her arm as _her_ head rested on _Mr_. Dr. P's shoulder.

Then the last thing he knew before a warm but troubled darkness settled over him was that her arm was around him, and maybe she wasn't Kim and maybe she wasn't his own mother, but she was close enough to being both that he fell asleep feeling safe and sheltered, and maybe that was what she wanted also, to be able to offer that comfor to _someone_ if she couldn't offer it to the person she really wanted to.

So they sat that way, and finally fell asleep that way, waiting in the hallway outside the room where Kim was kept, holding onto her life with all of her broken but indomitable strength.

----

Drakken set the hover-saucer down in the lair's hangar, then heaved a sigh of relief. For the first time since breaking out of Global Justice that morning, he felt reasonably safe. This lair, unlike so many of his others, was _truly_ secret. No sign posts, no magazine subscriptions. Just a tiny island – little more than the peak of a seamount poking above the water, really – far from any shipping lanes and barely a speck on the charts.

"Not a bad day's work, Shego," he said as he climbed out of the saucer and started to walk away, trying to cover his earlier panic with bravado. "With Kim Possible out of the way, we…Shego?"

He glanced back at the saucer. Shego hadn't gotten out. Shego hadn't moved. Shego, in fact, was still sitting in the same position, staring straight ahead.

With a sigh, Drakken returned to the saucer and – knowing that she would break his arms for such presumption if she was still sitting there because she _wanted_ to – reached in and lifted her out.

He carried her to her quarters, marveling as he did so at how easy it was. Oh, she was heavier than she looked, being all muscle, but even that didn't add up to much. He'd benefited from the last few months in the prison gym, but that didn't change the simple, surprising fact that she was very light. Her strength and ferocity usually made Drakken forget just how small a woman she really was. Not quite as tiny as Kim Possible…as Kim Possible _had been_…but still…

A moment came to mind. He'd just received a rejection letter from one of the genius societies he was always applying to. He'd thrown it away, but Shego, curious, had grabbed it before it landed in the fire. He'd tried to grab it back from her, but she had held him away _with her leg_. Partly because it was a graceful, martial-artist thing to do…and partly because he could have reached easily if she'd tried to hold him away with an arm.

And the time that he'd tucked Nakasumi's Diablo-sketch into his coat pocket. She'd had to _climb_ him to get to it.

He knew that, as a supervillain, such a difference should have made him feel more powerful. More dominant. Instead, it made him feel oddly…protective?

He banished the feeling as he tucked Shego into her bed (he pulled off her boots but left the rest of her outfit in place for fear of his own life). Not only was it bad supervillain form to feel that way, but if Shego ever found out about it, she'd show him just how little of his protection she needed.

He turned to walk away.

"I've been thinking."

"Ahh!" He jumped and spun, turning to see Shego sitting up in her bed. "What?"

"I've been thinking," She repeated.

"You've been _catatonic_," He retorted, forcing his breathing to return to normal.

"Have I?" She shrugged. "Well, I've also been thinking."

"About what?" He demanded, deciding that he was annoyed at being startled so.

"Have you ever noticed how bad we are at what we do?" She asked.

"You mean taking over the world?"

"Yeah."

"I actually think we're quite good at it," He said, a little hurt. "We've come closer to true global domination than any empire ever did. Especially last time. If it weren't for that Kim Possible – "

"That's just the thing," Shego said. "Why didn't we ever take her out? Before today, that is."

Drakken was a little bit puzzled about where this was going. "It's not for lack of trying," He said.

"No?" She said. "If we wanted to break her spirit, why go to all the trouble of Eric the syntho-hottie? We'd captured her before. Why not just turn her over to the henchmen?"

"What do you mean?" Drakken asked, knowing very well what she meant and hoping that the room's dim lighting (and his own blue pigment) would hide the fact that he blanched a little at the thought.

"One good gang rape would've pretty much done the job, don't you think?" She said bluntly. "She wouldn't have been much of a threat if she'd been afraid to leave her house, or so terrified of it happening again that she wouldn't come near us. Heck, if we'd made the Sidekick watch, maybe we could have even gotten the spirit-breaking twofer. If you'd done it that time you captured them all when you were handing out those stupidity hats, you could have had your revenge on Daddy Possible, too."

"Isn't that a little…gross, Shego?" Drakken asked. "I mean, she's so young."

Shego shrugged. "Hey, if there's grass on the field, she's old enough to play."

"_What_?"

"If she's old enough to bleed, she's old enough to breed," She said, her voice hard. "Look, do you think _I'm_ the one who makes this stuff up?" The question was asked with such ferocity that Drakken didn't dare answer it, but he did wonder where the ferocity came from. "If she and the buffoon weren't screwing yet, they would've been soon. Does that make it any less 'gross'?"

"Well, uh…"

"Look," she pressed on. "If you don't have the nerve for _real_ spirit-breaking, then we could've just killed her. Right? You tried to do _that_ often enough."

"True."

"But if we'd _really _wanted her dead…even before I started powering up, I could blast holes through walls. One of those times she was out cold or tied up, I could have taken her pretty head clean off, or blown a hole the size of a basketball through her center of mass…which would pretty much cut her in two, come to think of it. Or you could've just put one of your rayguns to her temple, and _zap!_"

Drakken flinched, but Shego took no notice.

"Why didn't we just do that instead of all those stupid death traps with thirty-minute timers that she or her sidekick or his pet could get them out of in two?"

By now, Drakken's face had paled to the powder blue of a bad seventies prom tuxedo. The thought of Kim Possible in bloody chunks was less pleasing to him than he'd imagined it would be. The thought of Kim Possible with her spirit broken in the way that Shego had described was actually making him ill. But he couldn't let Shego know that. Besides, it was a moot point "Because that…uh…that would have been bad supervillain form, Shego," He said. "There are certain rules of engagement."

"So what? We're evil. I take candy from babies and you steal wheelchairs. When we run the world, _we_ decide what's good form and what's not."

"Gang rapes and shooting prisoners is the way of common thugs and petty dictators, Shego, not world conquerors." He tried to sound as haughty and affronted as he could.

She just raised an eyebrow at him. "I just have to wonder how hard we were really trying."

"Well, if you're so smart," Drakken huffed, "_You_ can come up with the next plan. Tomorrow." Glad of the excuse, he turned and started to stomp from the room.

"Dr. D."

Reluctantly, Drakken stopped in the doorway. "Yes, Shego?"

"Have you ever killed anybody?"

With a sigh, he turned back to her. He'd known what this was about all along, and he'd been trying to avoid it. "I honestly don't know," he said. "I've never been charged with murder, so I guess not. I've taken actions that would have resulted in people's deaths if I'd succeeded. I've certainly tried to kill Kim Possible often enough."

"So have I," she said. She wasn't looking at him anymore. Instead, she stared at her hands where they lay in her lap. "Be careful what you wish for, I guess."

Knowing that he was taking his life in his hands, Drakken sat down on the bed and patted her back. "You've had a very busy day, Shego. You're tired. Why don't I go make you a co-co moo, then you can get some sleep, and you'll feel much better in the morning."

"Please stop calling me that," She whispered.

"Calling you what?"

"Could you...could you use my real name? Please. Call me Sheila."


	3. Tourniquet

There is always a day after even the most harrowing day. Whether or not one lives to see it is, of course, the question that makes a day harrowing. But if one does live to see that next day, it is often distressingly ordinary. Business must be gotten on with, needs must be met.

Dr. Drakken wasn't thinking this, exactly, as he sat down to a bowl of oatmeal in his lair's kitchen, but he did feel vaguely disappointed. It just seemed that he should be doing something more than sprinkling sugar into hot cereal on the day after Kim Possible's death. Not to mention the day that Shego had finally lost her mind. Funny, he'd always thought he'd beat her to that.

Well. Speak of the devil, and she shall appear.

Shego entered the kitchen wearing a green bathrobe, with her hair tied back in a simple ponytail.

Was she…was she humming and sashaying? And something else looked different about her, too. What was it?

He watched her as she cracked two eggs into a frying pan, trying to figure it out. He just shook his head as she took the handle in one hand, lit up the other, and held it under the pan. He took a sullen bite of his oatmeal as the eggs began to sizzle. Show-off. He'd just have to ask her, then. Women might prefer you to notice just what was different, but it was worth at least a few points to notice that _something_ was before they told you so.

"So did you sleep well, Sheila?" He asked.

Her flaming hand clenched, crumpling the iron skillet like tinfoil. "What did you just call me?"

"Uh, Sheila, just like – "

Before he could even realize what was happening, they were both across the room, and she was slamming him against the wall with one hand around his throat and the other drawn back and flaming.

"Ahh! Sheila!"

"Stop calling me that!" She shrieked, driving her blazing fist through the cave wall beside his head. He gave a girly scream and cowered as best he could with her holding him pinned. "I told you once," she continued, her voice quiet and deadly. "That the last time I wanted to hear that name was when you read it off my resume'."

"But…last night…" He whimpered.

"What _about_ last night?" She demanded. Then her eyes widened. "Hey, what _did_ happen last night? I remember splattering the Princess, but after that, everything gets fuzzy!" She tightened her grip on his throat and yanked him down so they were nose-to-nose.

"Decided to celebrate with me a little last night, huh? Was it some kind of mind control thing, or did you just slip me some roofies?"

"No! Neither! Nothing like that!" Drakken wailed, waving his hands frantically. "It's just that you got a bit weird after you killed Kim Possible! Maybe you had some sort of blackout from using so much of your power at once!"

She tightened her grip and pulled him in even closer. "And I told you to call me 'Sheila'?"

"Yes! Yes!"

Drakken covered his eyes and waited for the pain. When none came after a few seconds, he dared to peak out between his fingers. "Sheila" was looking at him suspiciously. He closed his fingers again and waited some more.

Finally, she let him go. He dropped to the floor, curled up in the fetal position, and began to suck his thumb.

"Okay," she said as she turned and walked away, passing between the splintered halves of the table, which she must have smashed on her way to grabbing him. "I'll let you live, then. I must've _really_ been out of it. Funny, that's never happened before…"

She got out another pan and some more eggs, and soon the sound of sizzling filled the kitchen again. Drakken slowly picked himself up as she cooked, silently cursing himself for thinking, even for a moment, that Shego "losing her mind" was even a little bit funny.

As he went to fetch a mop to clean up his spilled oatmeal (they'd have to start advertising for henchmen soon), he suddenly realized what looked different about Shego this morning.

How could he _not_ know? He'd just been staring right at it.

Shego's eyes were green again.

----

"Ron. Ron, wake up."

"Uh? Wha?" Ron raised his head up off the bench – at some point he'd gone from leaning on Mrs. Dr. P's shoulder to stretched out full-length – and did his best to pry his eyes open.

"And here I was afraid we'd wake him when we got up."

His vision cleared to reveal the Doctors P standing over him. Mrs. Dr. P was reaching down to shake him, while Mr. Dr. P was standing a step back, shaking his head.

Gray light was coming from a window down the hall. Dawn, or close to it. How long had he slept? Hard to say – he didn't know how late it had been when he'd finally fallen asleep.

He sat up, rubbing his neck. Not the worst crick he'd ever had, what with the sleeping on planes or waking up in captivity, but it was still a crick worthy of the name. "Did something happen?" He asked.

"Not really," Mrs. Dr. P answered. "She's out of surgery, and she's been moved into one of the CCU rooms. Would you like to see her for a minute?"

"Are you sure I'm allowed to? I mean…" He trailed off as he noticed Mrs. Dr. P. raising an eyebrow and Mr. Dr. P rolling his eyes. "Oh. Yeah. You're sure."

- - - -

Ron had seen Kim when she'd first been injured, and she'd been a mess. Of course she was: she'd been hit by a plasma blast, blown through a window (that was still his best guess for the glass cuts) and had a wall dropped on her. She was lucky she wasn't the kind of mess that you cleaned up with a sponge.

But he honestly couldn't say if she looked worse then, or now. _Then_, of course, she'd been all mangled. _Now_, the mangling was less visible, but there were tubes and bandages and wires and tape and cruel, cruel-looking things with metal struts and braces and rings and screws and pins. But that one tube that led to a bag hanging down beside the bed, a bag that was a quarter-full of a clear, yellow fluid…that was somehow the worst.

_Hello, God? Fate? Whoever's listening? Was that really necessary? Crippling her for life wasn't enough, you had to strip away every last scrap of dignity, too? No wound is so massive that it can't use a little lemon juice, is that it?_

"Hey, KP, you look…"

_Like a mummy? Or maybe the Borg Queen, what with all those wires and tubes? Much smaller than I remember? _

He didn't know what she looked like. He wanted to summon up his Ron-ness and chatter at her like nothing was any different, just in case some part of her could hear. Later, he would. But now…couldn't. Wanted to. Couldn't.

Instead, he looked for someplace he could touch her without hurting her. Finally, he had to settle for her right hand, which only had a few cuts. He took it, and said the only thing he could think of to say:

"I'm here, KP."

_You succeeded. You saved me. And now I'm right here beside you until you wake up, and I'm here for whatever comes after_.

"I'm here."

After that, he just stood there, gripping the bedrail and gently holding her hand, listening to the sound of her machines until her parents came in and led him away.

- - - -

Kim Possible lived through the night. That was the good news. Her damaged spine did not become an issue, however, because she didn't wake up.

- - - -

The Stoppables arrived at Middleton Hospital with the twins the very minute that visiting hours began. The twins' visit, of course, was very brief, and they spent all of it Trying To Be Brave, as eleven (twelve in October!)-year-old boys will do. They had even less to say to their sister than Ron had, but they did bring her pandaroo. They left it tucked in the crook of her arm as all of them trooped down to the hospital cafeteria.

They were halfway through a silent breakfast – the first food Ron had eaten since his slices of double-cheese pizza the day before – when a familiar four-note ringtone went off.

Ron pulled the Kimmunicator out of his pocket: "Hey, Wade."

The ten-year-old genius's face fell. "Oh. Hey, Ron. I was kinda surprised to see that I was still getting a signal from the Kimmunicator, so I decided to see what was going on."

_You were hoping that if the Kimmunicator was okay, then maybe it was all a dream or something, and if you called, Kim would appear and say "What's the sitch?" and everything would be A-OK. That's what you mean, isn't it? Sorry, Wade._

"Kim must've dropped it," Ron explained. "That's why it's not part of her hip right now."

Wade winced. And he wasn't the only one.

"An EMT found it, recognized it, and brought it to us," Ron finished.

"Well, it's just as well that I caught you. Have you seen the news?"

"Never do if I can help it, my man."

"Well, I think you'd better see this."

Wade's face disappeared from the Kimmunicator, to be replaced by the ruptured façade of Middleton High. A familiar figure emerged from the gaping hole in the school wall.

President George W. Bush.

"I'd wondered why the press hadn't made it here yet," Don Stoppable commented.

"My fellow Americans," the President began. "Today, I am doing something that I hoped I would never again have to do: I am standing on a site where terrorism has once again struck on American soil. Less than twenty-four hours ago, Middleton High School was attacked by the international criminal Dr. Drakken. Loss of life was only avoided by the Grace of God, and the great personal sacrifice of a true American hero: Kim Possible."

"This act cannot stand, and it will not stand. We will hunt this enemy of freedom down and bring him to justice. As for Kim Possible, she will be awarded - "

"Enough, Wade," Ron said. "That's enough."

"Aww," One twin said. "I wanted – "

"To see what kind of medal – " The other continued.

"Kim was getting," The first finished.

"I'm sure we'll find out soon enough, boys," Mr. Dr. Possible said. "Though I'd have thought we'd be told first."

Wade's face reappeared on the Kimmunicator. "You see why I had to show you that, Ron?"

"You mean other than so I know that Drakken knows that he's perfectly safe now?"

The bitter sarcasm was so different from Ron's usual reactions that Wade didn't quite know how to respond to it. "Uh…yeah. That, and – "

"Every supervillain out there now knows that Kim's out of action. I got it."

Everyone else at the table went still.

"Does that mean that Kim's in more danger?" Mrs. Dr. Possible asked. "Will her enemies be coming after her here?"

Ron and Wade thought about it for a moment, then shook their heads.

"Nah," Ron.

"I don't think so," Wade.

"The Seniors don't have any real grudge against Kim," Wade explained. "Supervillainy is a hobby for them. They even follow a rulebook. I downloaded a copy of it not long after that time they tried to hold Europe's power hostage, and attacking an opponent at a time like this would be very bad form."

"Monkey Fist would consider it a breach of honor, too," Ron added. "What with the English Lord thing and the martial artist thing. Besides, it's me he really hates. So be on the lookout for monkey ninjas." He shuddered. "Why does it have to be monkeys?"

"The camp mascot can't have been _that_ bad, dear," His mother said automatically.

"You weren't there. You didn't – "

"Anyway," Wade said, interrupting what was apparently an argument so old that it had become actual reflex, "Dr. Dementor was in Global Justice's prison when Shego and Drakken blasted their way out, and he's apparently still cringing and whimpering."

"Not that that's unusual," Ron said. "And DNAmy is liable to send an actual get-well gift. And if we're lucky, it'll be a plush Cuddlebuddy instead of a live one."

"If Drakken and Shego are smart," Wade continued, "They'll be laying low for a while. You guys are on every channel, and I do mean _every_ channel. The whole world is outraged over this – an attack on a school and all." He paused, his face looking slightly uncomfortable. "Uh, well, that is, almost the whole world. Al-Jazeera is actually kind of gloating. 'Now the Americans know how we feel', and that kind of thing."

"Really needed to hear that, Wade."

"Sorry about that, I – "

"Just presenting all the information, I gotcha," Ron said, waving it off. "Now, that on-every-channel thing isn't gonna last. Nobody even died here, so everybody's gonna forget about this as soon the next Hollywood star checks into rehab or the next politician drops his pants. Still, I think you're right – the lying low should last for a while. GJ and the Department of Homeland Security have longer memories than the media. Sometimes. Kinda."

"So you're not worried about one of Kimmie's enemies trying to finish the job?" Mr. Dr. Possible asked. He'd caught glimpses of this competent, confident Ron Stoppable before, but he'd rarely had the chance to truly watch him work. It was somewhat unsettling.

Ron and Wade both shook their heads.

"No, Dr. Possible," Wade said. "What we're worried about is a massive crime wave now that all of those villains know that Kim won't stop them."

"But we'll have to blow up that bridge when we come to it," Ron said. "Because right now, it's all about Kim."

----

It turned out that Ron was right. The media circus lasted for several days, during which they said "She's in critical but stable condition" and "We have no further comments at this time" a lot. A picture of Kim hooked up to all of those tubes and machines (_and that damn bag!_) somehow found its way to the papers, drawing outrage from Ron and Mr. Dr. Possible, but only weary, unsurprised resignation from Mrs. Dr. P. Then, just as Ron had predicted, there was a new development on the Angelina Jolie front, and all of the attention faded. It was just as well – Kim being critically injured while defending her classmates from a rampaging supervillain was less interesting than if she had, say, gotten arrested, or checked into rehab (especially for steroid use, which would handily explain to all the folks at home why _they_ couldn't do the things she could), or gotten married to a total stranger in Vegas, or turned up pregnant.

Kim didn't wake up once during that time. In a way, that was a mercy. Treating burns as severe and extensive as Kim's is not a painless process.

Both Doctors Possible had taken leaves of absence from their jobs, and one of them, or (with their express permission to the hospital) Ron was at Kim's bedside at all times. They were allegedly there to keep her company, to talk to and interact with her, to provide stimulation that might help wake her. And they did all that. To no one's surprise, Ron was the best at it once he got over that first night's shock. He would bring in movies – both "B" horror flicks to mock with her and the occasional chick flick that he knew she would like – and video games. He made Pandaroo "talk" to her. Sometimes he told her about his plans to open a restaurant of his own when he "grew up", and thus his need to go to college for Business (after all, he knew the cooking side of the equation instinctively), and how he planned to work hard this year to get into college with her.

Rufus came with him, of course, and he learned to do an imitation of a stuffed rat that fooled all of the hospital personnel except Mrs. Dr. P herself, though they did wonder why Kim seemed to respond better to the presence of that ugly thing, rather than the much cuter (if still somewhat disturbing) Pandaroo.

But there was another reason for the round-the-clock vigil, beyond making sure that _someone _was there when (not if!) Kim woke up. The same reason that the Doctors Possible, lacking Ron's skill at the martial arts, started packing heat in the form of their sons' harmless-looking inventions. That reason was simple: it was possible that Ron and Wade could be wrong in their assessment of Kim's enemies, or that some unknown might try to build his reputation by being the one to finish the job that Dr. Drakken couldn't.

As a week passed and no such attempts were made, however, their concerns turned more toward medicine than security.

On the plus side, many aspects of her recovery were proceeding as well as could be expected – better, in some cases. Kim was just plain healthier and tougher than the norm, even in circumstances such as these. One by one, machines and tubes were being removed. It was no longer "news" of any kind if she lived through the night.

Even better, if Kim's EEG readings were to be believed, she was definitely responding to the stimulation of being visited by Ron and her family.

The problem was that after two weeks of it, she still hadn't woken up.

There were various methods they could use to try and correct that; various treatments they could attempt. Some quite exotic. But they started with the simplest.

Kim responded well to the stimulation of visitors.

So. Perhaps more stimulation would help. Perhaps it was time to allow Kim more visitors.

**Kissing Sleeping Beauty**

"Hey, girl, you're lookin'…you're lookin'…Kim, I…I'm sorry, I can't…I can't…"

----

Monique burst out of Kim's room and fled down the hall, weeping. Felix and Ron watched her go, then turned back to each other with a sigh.

"That went well," Ron said.

"I didn't expect it to," Felix replied. "She doesn't like talking about it, but she's got some Issues about the attack." He took hold of his wheels and got ready to roll. "I'll go – "

Ron put a hand on his chest. "You go talk to Kim. _I'll_ go get Monique."

"Dude, she's _my_ girlfriend."

"Exactly. Look: she's got Issues? I've got Issues. I've got a lifetime subscription. I could put 'Issues' down as my major on my college applications. Trust me on this. I know what to do."

----

"Hey, Kim. Sorry about that. Don't worry, it's nothing to do with you. Well, not much. Monique has been a little bit messed up since the attack. She's been trying to hide it, but with all the time we've been spending together lately, it's hard not to notice."

"That's right – has anybody told you? She and I are dating now. It's great, but it almost didn't happen. My mom walked in on the conversation when Monique first asked me out, and she – Monique, that is – was right in the middle of describing what she planned to do with me as soon as she got me someplace more private than this hospital. Mom needed some serious convincing that Monique was mostly kidding, and we didn't have any immediate plans to do anything stupid. After that, though – well, that and a private little conversation they had where I suspect my Mom threatened Monique with killer robots if she ever hurt me – Mom has been absolutely ecstatic. I think she was starting to get worried that I was lonely. Which I was. Oh, you and Ron are great, but a guy wants a GF of his own, you know? And watching you and Ron cuddling and cooing 24/7 since the prom didn't help."

"Heh. I just realized – once again, you get to be all jealous that I'm taking up all of one of your friend's attention. Unless – hey, that's an idea. Maybe we could double date when you get out of here. How does that sound? We could really freak the mundanes, rolling down the street like a set of bookends around the normally-abled people. I warn you, though, everyone's going to think that you and I are together. After all, who would date a gimp but another…"

(_Silence._)

(_Sigh_)

"You probably don't think that's funny. I'm sorry. I've been like this so long that it's just the way my life is, and you don't even…"

(_Pause_)

"I know you're probably not going to remember any of this conversation when you wake up. But just in case you do: don't worry about hurting my feelings during your initial freak-out period. It happens to everybody. I understand."

(_Pause_.)

(_Sigh_)

"I've always been grateful for what I have, Kim. Like I'm always saying: I can do everything but walk, and my chair – well, hey, it kinda makes up for not being able to walk if you can fly, doesn't it? That's one thing I'm _really_ grateful for. How many paraplegics have moms who can turn their wheelchair into something worthy of being stolen by a supervillain?"

"But I won't kid you, Kim. It can be a hard life, even for me, and I wouldn't have wished it on you for anything. I promise, though, that I'll do what I can to get you off on the right…to get you ro…to help you through it. And so will my mom."

----

Ron found Monique in a secluded corner of hallway with a nice view of the surrounding hills. It was a great place to go to speak privately, or think, or cry your eyes out. Which was what Monique was doing.

He joined her at the window and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. There was nothing romantic in the half-hug – twelve years with a best friend who was a girl had given him a working idea of what to do when someone was crying.

"Ron, I'm – I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" She sobbed before he could even greet her. "I just, I, I just couldn't, couldn't face h-her!"

"What, she's that ugly now?"

Monique stopped sobbing and snapped her head around to stare at him, her eyes and mouth agape.

"Well?" Ron prompted, as if he hadn't said anything unusual. "I know you're big on the fashion thing and all, but it still seems a little harsh."

"No, no!" She protested, stepping away from him and waving her hands defensively. "Not – nothing like that! She's – it's – it's Kim in there, and yeah, she's ABU, but I don't give a shit about that!"

"All banged up?" Ron guessed.

"Yeah."

"If that's not it, then what is?" He asked.

She started to shake her head. "Ron, I – "

" – Ran away from her like you were afraid she was contagious," Ron finished, a hard edge in his voice. "I think I really need to know."

She stared up at him for a long moment. She'd never met this Ron before. She wondered if anyone but Kim's enemies ever had. Finally, she dropped her eyes from his. She was still shaking her head, but for an entirely different reason:

"It's nothing like that, either. Nothing bad about her at all. Totally the opposite, actually. The thing is, she's…I mean, I'm…" She took a deep breath. "Ron, you and Felix and even Rufus…you were all so brave in that fight. And Kim! Kim is always brave. And this time, she got hurt for it. Hurt bad. But me? I'm a coward."

Ron frowned. "Monique, you're not a – "

"You wanted to know," She interrupted. "Just let me tell it, okay?"

He subsided.

"All the rest of you just charged right into that fight – Kim with the CGB, you and Rufus and Felix – and even Bonnie and Brick! – against those GGGs. Rufus could've got stepped on, Josh needs surgery to fix his face, Felix got shot down, and Kim…" She swallowed hard. "And what was I doing while all this was goin' on? Hiding behind that table. I just stayed there, too scared to move and one loud noise away from peeing my panties, ready to put my hands up as soon as someone told me to, as long as it looked like the GGGs were winning. Then Felix comes in and busts 'em up, and _that's _when I finally grow a pair. I only get up and start fighting when the fight's already halfway to won, how's that for gutless? I get a little fat lip and Kim gets blown up. So now, I just can't…I just can't face her, Ron. More cowardice, I guess."

She fell silent. She kept her eyes on the floor, like a small child waiting to be punished.

Ron watched her for a long moment. Judging perhaps? Then the moment passed: "You know," he said. "When I said something like that, Mrs. Dr. P hit me. Now I understand why."

Monique finally looked up at him again, a mixture of unpleasant expressions on her face. There was surprise – _Kim's mom hit someone? She hit _Ron There was fear – _is Ron going to hit _me But mostly, there was a bone-deep misery that didn't really care if she was hit, that felt she deserved it, that braced for the contempt and hatred that she was sure was imminent from him, because she already felt so much of it for herself.

What she actually got was something totally unexpected.

"Are you this stupid naturally, or did you take lessons?"

She blinked. "Huh?"

He reached out and took her by the shoulders. She glanced down at his hands, but otherwise didn't respond to them. Instead, she looked back up at him, utter confusion on her face.

"Monique, there is almost no such thing as cowardice when your school is attacked by terrorists and monsters. The people who hid under tables aren't cowards. The people who ran away as soon as they got a chance aren't cowards. The people who stood and fought were very, very brave – and maybe a little stupid. After all, when you're not trained to deal with a sitch, hiding and running away are probably smarter. And hey! Congratulations! You're one of the brave morons! It just took you a little while longer to work up your nerve, that's all."

"But – "

"Ah!" He raised a finger to her lips. "I'm not going to argue with you on this, and I'm not going to try and convince you. Not now. It would take too long. Right now, I'll settle for hearing you say this out loud: 'I am being totally, Ron's-fear-of-bugs-level irrational'. Say it."

He removed his finger. She remained silent and staring, not quite believing that this conversation was happening.

"Go on," he prompted.

"I am being totally, Ron's-fear-of-bugs-level irrational."

"Good. Now: I am not a coward."

"I am not a coward."

"Nothing that happened in that battle is in any way my fault."

"Nothing that happened in that battle is in any way my fault."

"I'm going to give Felix head whenever he wants."

"He'll get as much as he gives."

The tension snapped like an over-tightened guitar string, and the two teens collapsed into helpless gales of laughter. After a moment, they straightened, wiping at their eyes.

"Good reaction time," Ron complimented. "But knowing what I know about Felix, he couldn't _survive_ getting as much as he's going to give."

"Likes pleasing his woman, does he?"

"He's just been waiting for the chance."

"Sounds like I got me a good one." Then the smile faded from her face. "And so did Kim."

Ron blushed. "I'll take your word for that. But speaking of Kim: are you finished with your freakage?"

Monique took a deep breath, nodded, and squared her shoulders. "Yeah. Yeah, I am."

----

"Hey, girlfriend. I'm back for Take Two. You can thank Ron for that. I always knew he was a good man, but I don't think any of us knew just how good. He's what's kept you from flying apart all these years, isn't he? You hold onto that boy with both hands, girl – and wrap your legs around him as well."

"But I guess you finally figured that out yourself. Okay, since we're talking about good men, let me tell you how things are going with Felix…"

**The Wicked Queen, the Evil Wizard, and the Ogre**

"Hi, Kim."

"Wow, this is kind of weird. This is only, what? The second time we've met that wasn't on opposite sides of a computer screen? I just didn't think a visit from the Wade-bot would be quite the same."

"Now that I'm here, though, I'm not really sure what to do. I mean, I don't think I've ever actually touched you before. I don't think I can start now. I'd just be too worried about hurting you or infecting you or something. Ron and your mom told me it was okay, and it's not like I don't believe them, but it's just so hard to actually do it now that I'm in here."

"Uh, anyway. You probably don't want to hear any more about that. I wish I had more to talk about, but there just hasn't been much news. The search for Drakken and Shego is still ongoing – Global Justice and Interpol and security and intelligence agencies from a dozen countries are in on it – but nothing has turned up yet."

----

"Dr. D."

Drakken did his best to ignore Shego, in the hopes that she would go away. It didn't work. He'd never been very good at ignoring her anyway – he could always feel her there. Watching.

"Dr. D."

"Can't talk," He said, not raising his eyes from the tangle of electronic parts on the table before him. "Inventing."

"Inventing what?"

"That's on a need-to-know basis," He said. "And you don't need to know yet."

"Inventing nothing," Shego said flatly. "Just tinkering, with no idea what you're trying to do."

She was right, of course, but Drakken saw no reason to humor her impertinence. Instead, he raised his head from his work and glowered at her as menacingly as he could. As usual, she was completely unimpressed. "Don't you have some work you should be doing, Shego?" He growled.

"Nope," Having caught his attention, she leaned back from the table and slouched into her chair. "I've done all the sitting on my ass that I can fit into the schedule today."

"So what do you want _me_ to do about it?" He snapped. "Invent you a video game?"

"That'd be nice," she said. "But I was thinking more along the lines of some work."

"Work? As in world-conquering work?"

She leaned forward in her seat again, her eyes shining with eagerness. "Yeah. Exactly."

"You don't seem to be getting the idea of this 'lying low' thing, Shego."

"Come on," Shego pleaded, thumping her fists on the table. "It doesn't have to be something big, as long as it's working toward the goal!"

"Since when do you go looking for extra work?"

"I'm just so _bored_! I haven't kicked anybody's ass in weeks – " She paused to give him an ominous look, then continued. "And besides…" This time, her look was sheepish. "I guess I kinda got the taste for it when we came so close with the Diablo thing." Suddenly, her face lit up. "Hey! That's an idea!"

"What's an idea?"

"Why don't you hack a communications satellite or something, and use it to send out a command signal to all the leftover Diablos?"

"But…" Drakken protested. "There aren't enough of them left for a world-conquering strategy. Without the numbers and the placement to immobilize military responses, they'd be taken down."

"But they'd do a lot of damage first," She said, sounding not at all unlike a child describing the play-possibilities of her favorite Christmas present.

"That's not conquest," Drakken said, as if he was offended by the mere suggestion. "That's just garden-variety terrorism."

"Exactly! Terror! We need to remind people why they're afraid of us!"

"Shego, people have _two _possible reactions to things that frighten them, and we aren't prepared if they choose 'fight' over 'flight'. Remember that the men with machine guns and the planes with bombs are still a concern."

"To you, maybe, but not everyone in this base curls up and sucks their thumb when things get a little rough."

"Shego – "

"Hurting with our words. I know. But check this out."

She got out of her chair and took a few steps back from the table, stopping in a neutral position with her feet set wide apart. She started to take deep breaths, as if bracing herself for a very hard bit of work. Her hands flared, and then the flame rapidly spread up her arms. Her eyes glowed, then started to spew green fire. Green sparks billowed from her mouth.

All familiar by now. But then, something new: her hair…it didn't look like it _caught_ fire so much as it _became _fire.

Shego didn't look human anymore. She looked like some archangel of poisonous radiation.

She kept taking deep breaths, and the fire kept building, brightening, flaring higher and higher until –

With a primal war-scream, she threw her hands up and her head back and a column of green fire so sun-bright that Drakken had to cover his watering eyes erupted skyward and blew a hole in the roof of the cavern.

Drakken covered his head with his hands, but a moment later he realized that nothing was falling and nothing was going to. The rock had not been smashed by the blast, but vaporized.

"Whoo!" Shego cheered as she lowered her hands and turned her face back to him. As best he could tell with her coloration, she looked as pleasantly flushed and disheveled as a woman who'd just had a good orgasm. "Ha! How'd you like _that_? I bet they could see that one from space!"

That was exactly what he was afraid of, and he was about to tell her so when her expression suddenly changed. She stumbled back over to the table and collapsed into her chair, looking exhausted instead of exhilarated.

Small wonder. The blast she'd just set off was far more powerful than the one she'd hit Kim Possible with – more powerful, more controlled, and more focused. Forget about _seeing_ it from space, if there'd been a satellite above them when she'd set it off, it was space junk now.

"Shego?" he asked tentatively.

She'd been resting her face in her hands, but she looked up at him now. "I asked you not to call me that," she said wearily.

Her eyes were brown again. And her raven hair no longer had its green highlights.

"Sheila?" He said, very, _very_ carefully.

"_Si_," she nodded.

"Are you alright?"

"_Si._ Just…I'm just very _cansado_."

"Tired?" Drakken said. "Perhaps you should take a nap."

"Good idea." With that, Shego – no, he was quite sure it was Sheila right now – pushed away from the table – "_Buenas Noches_" – and staggered off toward her quarters.

Interesting. Maybe the James Possibles of the world wouldn't let him into their little genius clubs, but he _was_ a scientist. And he had enough data now to develop a working hypothesis.

He sat back down at the table, swept the electronics he'd been tinkering with aside and pulled out a notebook. He had one key piece of information that Shego didn't, and he now knew what his next project would be.

----

"On the other hand, it's not like there's no news at all. It seems like, with Drakken and Shego in hiding, some of your other enemies are trying to pick up the slack."

----

"Hey, Doof."

Duff Killigan whirled to face the intruder in his home. Ah. The Possible wench's little tagalong. He'd heard that the boy had had some ninja training. Seemed that it was true.

"That's Duff, boy."

"I just calls 'em like I sees 'em."

Duff bristled at that. "Ya cannae stop me, boy," he growled. "All ah have to do is get this – " He held up the terraforming device he'd stolen earlier that day. "Hooked up to a proper power supply, and soon ah'll be turning continents into putting greens!" He reached for the lever on his mantel.

"Okay."

"Eh?"

"I said okay." Ron put his hands in his pockets and began to slowly stroll around the room, looking at the furnishings as he went. "You said I can't stop you, and you're right. Your hand is already on the lever. There's no way I can get there in time."

Momentarily flustered, Duff gathered his bravado back around him. "That's right, Sonny Jim! You can't!" He paused. "I just thought yui'd be more upsit about it."

"Oh, I would be. But you're not going to push that lever."

"Oh? And why not?" Duff blustered.

"Because if you do, that'll leave me all alone up here with lots of what I'm guessing are priceless antiques."

It took a moment for Duff to understand the implied threat, but when he did, his jaw dropped. "Ye wouldn't dare!"

Ron took down one of a pair of hatchets that had been hanging crossed on the wall, and hefted it experimentally. "Try me," he said.

Duff's face turned brick red, and he glowered like a stormcloud. "Right," he said, putting the terraforming device down on the mantel and picking up his golf bag. "I'll just have to deal wi' ye _before _I go down, then. Let's see how tough you are without yuir filly, boy."

"Okay, you've called me 'boy' twice and 'Sonny Jim' once. My name is not that hard to remember."

"Which is fortunate for you," Killigan said, reaching for his ball pouch. "Because soon a memory is all you'll be!"

Faster than Killigan's eye could follow, Ron's hand dipped into his pocket and whipped back out again. Rufus sailed across the room, twisting his body as he flew to spin around behind the mad golfer. A flash of his teeth, and explosive golf balls – unactivated – were spilling everywhere.

"Ah, ah, ah," Ron scolded, shaking his finger. "Use those, and the knickknacks _still_ get trashed."

Duff grabbed hopelessly for his ammunition, then growled in frustration and drew his clubs. "Awright then, laddy, we'll just have to do this the hard way." He grinned ferociously as he advanced. "The slow way."

"Boy, Sonny Jim, and now 'Laddy'." Ron took the other hatchet down from the wall. "The name is Ron Stoppable."

----

Fifteen minutes later, the two of them (three, counting Rufus) stood on a hill outside of Duff's castle, waiting for a pickup by Global Justice. Duff had two faint scratches on his neck, and he was trembling violently. The handcuffs were hardly necessary. Rufus was sitting in Ron's pocket, looking up at his human with concern on his little face. For Ron's part, he was ignoring both of them and turning the terraforming device over in his hands.

"You know, something occurs to me," he said, still turning the device in his hands. "This little handheld landscaper whatchathingie meant a whole lot to the scientists who developed it. Years of work, lots of money, and maybe a Nobel prize for all the good they could do with this thing. And you just took it away from them. You took it away from all the people it could've helped, too – and even I can think of a couple dozen ways it could help people. And what about those continents you were going to turn into putting greens? You would've taken away millions of people's homes, maybe their lives, and you wouldn't care. Because nothing ever gets taken away from _you_. Oh, sure, you go to prison, but you always escape, and everything is right where you left it."

"And – pay attention, now, because this is the part that really _pisses me off_ – you thought that you could get away with all this because KP isn't around to stop you. So you took me away from my time with her in order to shut you down. Again."

Ron fell silent, still turning the device in his hands. Duff didn't say a word. He didn't dare. A lot of the boy's silly-ass manner remained the same as ever, but this time it seemed like nothing but a mask over something…well, something that made _him_ look sane and even-tempered. That monkey kung fu that Monkey Fist was always on about had been in full evidence, that was for sure. A few ducks and dodges, a couple of kicks worthy of the red-haired filly herself, and the fight had been over – he'd been on his back with those hatchets at his throat.

"Something else occurs to me," Ron said suddenly. "I have a reputation for pressing random buttons." He held up the terraforming device. "Ooh, look," he said. "Buttons."

"No!" Duff cried, starting forward.

Without even looking, Ron pulled one of the hatchets out of his belt and pointed at him with it. Duff froze. With his other hand, Ron pushed the button in question.

Thunder boomed through the earth as ancient slabs of rock shifted. Duff was knocked first to his knees, then his belly as the ground heaved. Ron kept his feet.

A few minutes later, Castle Killigan was nothing more than another rocky section of Scottish highland. A few minutes after that, a weeping Duff Killigan, an eerily-quiet Ron Stoppable, and a very concerned Rufus were picked up by Global Justice.

Ron watched Killigan weep as he was loaded into the GJ transport. He wished he could feel some sort of sense of triumph about this. Wanted to. Couldn't.

**Kissing Sleeping Beauty, Part 2**

"So. Here we are. I finally have you where I want you. I get to talk, and you have to listen. No bossiness, no comebacks, no pretending to listen but really ignoring me until I go away."

"I hate you, did you know that? I really, genuinely hate you. I didn't always, you know. Back when you were 'Tin Teeth', you were just annoying and pathetic. But then you just had to nail that tryout, and those two little traitors who were right there with me in not wanting you on the team started _clapping_ for you! Even then, I didn't hate you yet – you were just a little more annoying. I didn't know it was the beginning of the end."

"A year later, though, after you'd taken _my_ team away from me, _then_ I hated you."

"After that, it just got worse and worse. Everything I did, you did better. _I_ worked my ass off to get honor roll. _You're_ a shoo-in for Valedictorian. _I _do and say and wear the right things to bepopular. _You're_ world-famous. _I_ have years of ballet and cheerleading, and I'm one of the best cheerleaders out there. _You_ have sixteen black belts, and you _are_ the best."

"You want to know the real reason I hate you? It's because no matter what I do, I can never, ever beat you. Not really. I can't even catch up. I hate you because you're worse than my sisters. You're both of them _put together_. You're beautiful and smart and the only person who even pretends to think that I can compete with you is my Mom. And Brick, but that's probably because I'm letting him into my pants."

"So…yeah, I hate you. And I want to _keep_ hating you. So you'd just better get better, do you hear me?"

(_Sniff_)

"Because, b-because if you _don't_ get better, if you d-d-died or stayed a…a vegetable because you saved a wh-whole bunch of people's lives…and mine, even though I started that fight, even though I hate you…then that'll make you a hero, and I won't be able to hate you anymore. I'll have to be all admiring and grateful just like all the rest of the sheep. So you…you just get better."

(_Sniff, sniff_)

(_Questioning chatter_)

"Oh, it's you, you gross little thing. Aren't you, like, unhygienic or something? Come here."

----

Bonnie Rockwaller was cuddling Rufus to her cheek when Colleen Possible opened the door. He didn't usually like to be handled so by any but a select few humans, but he owed Bonnie, and he could tell that she needed this.

Bonnie started when she saw who'd come in. How much had she heard? She genuinely liked the older woman since the time they'd spent together on career week, and she didn't want to ruin that with some careless venting.

"Dr. Possible! I – "

Colleen Possible raised a finger to her lips. Then she gathered the red-eyed girl into her arms and hugged her tight. It was then that Bonnie realized that Dr. Possible had heard every word, and she started bawling.

It was some time before Colleen Possible took back Rufus – who'd been sitting on Bonnie's shoulder and stroking her hair as best he could – and handed the still-sniffling girl off to Brick, who took her home and did his best (admittedly questionable – videos of last year's football victories were involved) to cheer her up. Without trying to get into her pants.

----

Other visitors came and went. Tara and Josh (his eye bandaged and his speaking impeded by his wired jaw); the Detention Crew (Big Mike expressing his regrets to Ron that he had skipped school that day, and thus hadn't been available to help with either the fight or the digging); the cheerleading squad; people she'd helped. As predicted, DNAmy sent a get-well gift. Fortunately, it was a _stuffed_ Cuddle-Buddy.

Who knows? Maybe some or all of it even helped.

It happened, as such things sometimes do, with surprising suddenness. Ron was sitting by Kim's bedside, holding her hand, mocking an episode of _Agony County _when some of her monitors started to beep. Alarmed, he reached across her to press the nurse's call button. As he did so, his body was turned so he was looking directly into her face when her eyes fluttered open.

"Ron?" She said sleepily, her voice raw from disuse. "Is that you? Where am I? And why can't I move?"

Ron didn't answer. For the moment, he was stunned speechless. Instead, he jammed his thumb down on the call button much harder than he'd originally planned to, while his other hand dove into one of his pockets and hit another call button, this one to alert Wade and the Doctors Possible that Kim was back.

----

The next few hours were…hectic was one way to put it, though "horrible" might have been more accurate.

The initial joy at Kim's awakening was quickly swallowed up in the hurry and busyness of what seemed like an endless round of tests, most designed to determine how much brain damage her three-week coma had inflicted on her. Little to none, as it turned out: her vision and hearing were as keen as ever, and the only blank spot in her memory was the battle at Middleton High itself. She could remember nothing after Shego blew the cafeteria doors down. Ron had to fill her in on the rest as an explanation as to how she'd gotten where she was.

All of the news they got from Kim was good. It was the news they had to give her that was so heartbreaking.

----

Kim's eyes filled with tears as she looked up at her mother. "I thought…" She whispered. "I thought I couldn't move because of the casts and the braces, and that I couldn't feel anything because of the drugs."

Colleen Possible reached down and stroked her daughter's hair – the only comforting touch that would actually be felt. "Oh, baby, I wish that were true. More than I've ever wished for anything in my life."

Kim's eyes overflowed. She blinked, then squeezed her eyes shut. "I can't even wipe my own tears away."

Without comment, Colleen Possible took the tissue that her husband held out to her and did what Kim couldn't.

"Kimmiecub," Her father said. "I know this isn't what you want to hear…it probably won't even make you feel better, but…we're here for you. We'll…" He stopped himself from saying 'take care of you'. "…help you. We're not the only ones, either."

Kim opened her eyes again, and as she lay there looking up at her parents, she experienced a moment of terrible clarity.

"Bring in the others," She said. "Ron, the Tweebs – let them in. Quick."

Her father looked surprised, but didn't argue. Instead, he went to the door and opened it. "Okay, boys," he said. "You can come in, now."

Ron, Jim, and Tim, sent into the hall when the Doctors Possible had sat down with Kim to tell her the full truth about her injuries, filed in. All three looked like they were searching for something to say. Rufus, poking his head out of Ron's pocket, just looked sympathetic.

Kim spoke up before they could. "In about thirty seconds," she said, "I'm going to start freaking out. There will be crying. There will be screaming. I'm going to get right started on the six stages thing with the denial and the anger and the depression. But before all that starts, I want to say something."

They gave her their 100 percent _rapt_ attention. How else do you respond to something like that?

"I want to thank you all, and tell you how much I love you for saving my life and working so hard to help me. I don't wish that I'd died, and I don't want to die now." She fixed her eyes on Ron for a moment. "I don't even wish that I'd done something different. I am going to get through this, and I am going to have a life. And I am going to need all of you to remind me of those things. A lot. Okay?"

They all nodded and made noises of agreement. Tears stood in four human pairs of eyes. The twins were sniffling, despite their best efforts. Ron heard Rufus whimpering in his pocket and wished that his eyes weren't dry. He certainly _wanted _to cry.

Couldn't.

But, wet or dry, there was pride in their eyes as well. Kim had never seemed more brave.

"Okay," Kim said, her voice shaking as the iron control she'd been keeping on herself started to break. "Freak-out commencing, then."

Before it could commence, however, there was a frantic knock at the door.

"Come back later!" James Possible bellowed. "We need a moment, here!"

The knocking didn't stop. Instead, it was joined by a vaguely familiar voice. "James!" The voice called. "James, let me in! This is important!"

James Possible's eyes went very wide. He lunged for the door and threw it open. Standing in the hallway was a bespectacled young man – also vaguely familiar – who was dressed like he'd arrived directly from the eighties.

James Possible's wide eyes now narrowed in recognition…and rage.

"Drew."


	4. Suture

James Timothy Possible didn't say another word, or give Drew Lipsky a chance to do so either. He just launched a right cross that sent his former college friend crashing to floor.

As soon as he hit the linoleum, the hologram that had allowed Dr. Drakken, Mad Scientist and International Super-Criminal to enter Middleton Hospital unnoticed flickered out. But no one had the chance to notice that Dr. Drakken, Mad Scientist and International Super-Criminal, was sprawled on the floor outside one of Middleton Hospital's private rooms, because James Possible and Ron Stoppable immediately grabbed him by the ankles, dragged him into the room, and slammed the door.

They dragged him up off the floor, slammed him against the door, and drew their fists back to begin a possibly-fatal beating when Drakken cried "Wait! Wait!"

Enraged as they were, neither Ron Stoppable nor James Possible were violent men by nature, and they reflexively hesitated. Drakken took the opportunity to stop waving his hands defensively in front of himself and raise them as if his two assailants were covering him with guns.

Both Ron and James paused, confused.

Drakken slowly started to lower one of his hands toward the front of his coat.

Ron started forward.

Drakken's hand snapped back up. "Colleen," he said.

Colleen Possible started, surprised that Drakken would address her when he was in such an immediate life-or-death situation with Ron and James. For her own part, she had instinctively backed across the room, pushing her sons behind her, putting herself between her children and the threat.

"Colleen," Drakken repeated. "This coat has pockets inside it. Could you reach into the one at the left breast and take what you find there? I don't want it to get broken when they start in on the body blows."

Slowly, her wind up, Colleen crossed the room as Ron and James took hold of Drakken's arms. Carefully, she reached into the front of Drakken's coat and felt around until she found the pocket. She snatched out the contents and backed away. The two men let go and stepped back to their original positions.

She looked down into her hand.

A hypodermic needle. A big one, filled with some sort of greenish fluid.

"Could you please keep that safe for me, Colleen? Thank you." Drakken turned his attention back to Ron and James. "All right, gentlemen. Go ahead."

Ron started forward to do just that, but Mr. Dr. Possible blocked him. "What are you doing here, Drew?" He demanded.

"He's here to kill Kim!" Ron shouted, struggling against the older man. "Don't you see? That's some sort of poison, and if we hadn't been here – "

"But you _were _here, Ronald," Drakken interrupted. "And instead of sneaking away to come back later, I knocked on the door and let you know I was here."

Ron paused. "You remembered my name," he said at last.

"Yes. You made very sure of that, didn't you, Mr. Stoppable?"

"You haven't answered my question, Drew," James Possible interrupted. "And you're running out of time."

"Isn't it obvious?" Drakken asked. "I'm here to help."

----

The Possible family and Ron Stoppable stared in blank, wide-eyed shock at the mad scientist's sheer audacity. That shock would become rage would become violence in seconds, and Drakken must have sensed it. He pointed as best he could with his hands still up. "That hypodermic that Colleen is holding contains a cocktail of nanotech left over from the Diablos, gene therapy from DNAmy, and my own cloning technology incorporated into the nanotech."

"Is that supposed to mean something?" Ron demanded. Hearing nothing from the Possible family, he glanced over his shoulder at them. Judging by the looks on their faces, it did.

"Nanotech cloning devices," Mr. Dr. Possible said in awe. "To work on the microscopic – the _cellular_ level!"

"Injected into the bloodstream," Mrs. Dr. Possible continued. "It could seek out damaged tissue…clone new cells from surviving old ones…rebuild the tissues, even tissues that would never heal on their own…" She raised her eyes from the hypodermic to stare at Drakken. "_Nerve_ tissue."

He nodded. "_Now_ you're getting it."

"No." Ron said, shaking his head. "It's a lie. It's a trick. It has to be."

"Why would I lie, Ronald?"

Ron grabbed him by the throat and slammed the back of his head against the door. "Because that's what you do! That's what you are! Haven't you said it yourself? 'I'm a very bad man'?"

"And I am. But use your head, Ronald. What do I have to gain from sneaking into a hospital and killing a crippled, comatose Kim Possible? The supervillain community itself would join in on hunting me down like a rabid animal. She's no threat to me as she is – why make a martyr instead of letting her fade into an uninspiring, resource-draining shadow of what she used to be?"

Ron slammed his head against the door again and began to tighten his grip. "You watch your mouth," he snarled.

"Ron!" Kim called from her bed.

Instantly – but reluctantly – Ron let go of Drakken's throat. Then he and the Possible family stepped aside, clearing a path between Drakken and the bed, where Kim had turned her head toward the door.

"Ah," Drakken said, rubbing at his neck. "Kimberly. Hello. I didn't think you'd be awake."

"I almost wasn't," she said. "That's so not the big right now. You asked what you have to gain by killing me, and the answer is a pretty clear nothing. But that's not the big, either. The real question here is: what do you have to gain by _helping_ me?"

"That's easy," Drakken answered. "You're the only one who can help Shego."

----

For the second time in as many minutes, the Possible family and Ron Stoppable could only stare at Drakken, dumbfounded. This time, it was Colleen Possible who regained the ability to speak first. "You think…" she said, her voice thick with rage. "That you can come in here…_claim _that you can fix the damage you've done…" She held up the hypodermic in a shaking fist. "And we'll help you and your _monster_?"

Drakken's chin came up at the word 'monster'. "I think that Kimberly will do just what she's always done:" He said with icy dignity. "Come after me and Shego, and bring us down. If she follows my plan, we can do it in a way such that no one gets killed. In exchange, I'm offering your daughter her body back. Use that hypo, and years of physical therapy in order to twiddle her fingers – maybe – suddenly turns into months to get back to where she was before."

Silence. Again.

"Let me get this straight," Kim said at last. "You want to help me, and in exchange, you want me to capture you and Shego. According to your plan. No tricks, no escapes, you want to go to jail."

"That pretty much sums it up," Drakken agreed, nodding.

"Sounds great," Ron said. "Except you left out the part where this is a trap."

Drakken sighed in frustration. "Ronald – "

"Why go to all the trouble?" Kim finished for him. "What could he do to me that's worse than what he's already done?"

"Thank you."

"Most assuredly not welcome."

"Why?" James Possible broke in. "That's the part that you _are_ leaving out. I think you had better explain, and that you'd better be both fast and convincing."

Drakken held his chin-up, coldly dignified pose for a moment longer. Then he sighed, and his shoulders drooped. "Shego needs help," He said. "Mental help. She's going insane."

Ron sneered. "Because she was so stable before."

"She _was_," Drakken insisted. "She was a hot-tempered bully, but she was very realistic and pragmatic…well, except for the 'working with me' part. But now…her powers have been growing for months – "

"We kinda figured that part out," Ron interrupted.

" – and it's doing something to her," Drakken continued, with a venomous look at the blond teen. "The closest comparison I can think of is 'roid rage: the more powerful she gets, the more psychotic she becomes. She's gone past bad-tempered and mercenary to random acts of terror and destruction."

"Kinda got that, too."

"But more than that," Drakken said, "Her personality is splitting while I watch. Whenever her power is low, I get to talk to 'Sheila'. Who, you might be interested in learning, is absolutely guilt-stricken."

"Uh-huh. Yeah. The heart is just bleeding."

Drakken glared at him. "Enough. You have no reason to care about us, so care about this: there is an unstable powerhouse back at my lair who will be wandering the world like Hiroshima on two legs within a few months if you don't help me get her into a Global Justice psychological ward."

Ron stepped up to him and matched him glare-for-glare. "That _would_ be too bad. But I have an idea how to prevent it _without _making a deal with the devil. We've already got your stuff, so why don't we just take you prisoner right now, and help her like they helped Old Yeller?"

Drakken froze. "I won't help you kill her," he said. "And without my help, anyone you send will die."

"No."

Man and boy both ignored the voice from the bed.

"Maybe not if they bomb the shit out of the place from two miles away," Ron countered. "Some people aren't as nice as Kim and I, and they have ways of getting your lair's coordinates from you."

"No."

"I wouldn't count on even _that_ keeping them safe," Drakken said. "Besides, Shego's body is saturated with a completely unknown form of radiation. How do you know that killing her won't set off an explosion that – "

"_NO!"_

Every head turned toward the bed.

"No," Kim repeated, more quietly. "No one dies. Not on my watch. Not if there's some way I can stop it. Not even Shego. I accept."

"KP – "

"Kimmiecub –"

"I accept," Kim repeated more strongly. "Unless you want to take advantage of the fact that I'm in this bed to make me helpless? By taking that decision away from me?"

Kim's father's mouth closed with a sigh. He covered his eyes, and his shoulders dropped. All of the furious power went out of him, and he looked just as tired and old as he had the first night Kim was brought in.

"No," he said. "I won't do that."

"But KP," Ron protested, much more weakly this time. "What if there's, like…mini mind-control chips or nanobombs in there, too? So that after you do what he wants, you have to _keep_ doing what he wants?"

"Yeah," Jim agreed, finally feeling safe to enter the conversation.

"What if?" Tim finished.

Drakken looked genuinely stunned. "What amazing ideas," he said. "I never even thought of that. No wonder 'Zorpox' was a better supervillain than me."

Ron flushed in embarrassment and anger.

"But no, I don't think I would have had time to do it anyway. It was pure luck that I was able to get this done under Shego's nose as it was."

"I have another concern," Mrs. Dr. Possible said in what most of those present had come to think of as her 'clinical' voice. "What you're trying to do with this," she held up the hypodermic. "Is essentially very rapid cell reproduction – "

"Yes. Kimberly will be ravenously hungry for weeks. She'll need lots of protein and calcium."

"I expected that. What I'm worried about is cancer risk."

Drakken shook his head. "I don't know about the long-term health risks – mad scientists don't have FDA testing – though I don't expect they're any worse than a life in bed would be. She won't be bursting with tumors two hours from now, if that's what you're worried about. The nanites only live for a few minutes."

She nodded. "That's the best I can hope for, I guess." She turned to her daughter's bed. "Are you sure about this, honey?"

Kim took a deep breath, bit her lip, and nodded.

Without another word, Colleen Possible inserted the hypodermic needle into one of her daughter's IV bags and depressed the plunger. The greenish, vaguely glowing fluid swirled and mixed with the saline solution for a moment, then began to flow down the IV tube of its own volition. Then she withdrew the needle, drew back the plunger, stepped across the room, and, without warning, grabbed Drakken by the neck with one hand and put the needle against his throat with the other.

"I just filled this with air," she said. "If what I just gave my baby hurts her in any way, you have a massive heart attack."

"Don't do that, Colleen," Drakken said calmly. "If you do, it'll deprive James and Ronald of the pleasure of kicking me to death. You can join them in that, if you feel the need to."

Colleen Possible was stunned enough by his response that she allowed him to raise a hand and move the needle away from his neck.

By then, all of the greenish fluid had filtered down the IV line and into Kim's body. "Is anything happening?" She asked. "I don't – " Suddenly, her eyes went very wide and her mouth dropped open.

"James, Ronald, hold the door," Drakken said. "Don't let anyone in. Boys, out of the way. Colleen, take her other side."

Surprised, they all obeyed as he crossed the room to Kim's bedside.

Her mouth was no longer simply hanging open. It was moving. Shaping the words "Oh, God" over and over again.

He took hold of her left hand where it stuck out of the cast that wrapped her arm. "That's right," he said soothingly. "That's how it's supposed to work. Everything is going just fine."

Her eyes were shut tight by now, and she was beginning to force some breath into her words. "ohgodohgodOhGod…" Her head began shaking back and forth, slowly at first and then gaining speed, as her voice slowly rose to a scream. "OhGod_ohGodohGod_OHGODOHGOD_OHGODOHGOD**OHGODITHURTS!**_ It hurts it hurts IT HURRRRRRTS!"

Colleen Possible looked desperately across the bed at Drakken, but he ignored her. "Of course it hurts, Kimberly," he said. "That's your nerves growing back, your bones knitting, scar tissue forming over your cuts and burns. It's going to hurt. But you're going to be all right."

There were running feet and shouting voices in the hallway, then a pounding at the door.

"Dr. Possible?" A voice called. "Dr. Possible!"

"Stay out!" She shouted back. "You can't come in here!"

"Dr. Possible!" The voice called again as the door handle was tried. Ron and James Possible put their shoulders against the door, though, and wouldn't let it open.

"_HURRRRTS!_"

Jim and Tim huddled together in a corner, terrified, not wanting to watch, unable to look away, wishing wishing wishing that they could do something anything.

Then they noticed something. Was Kim's body moving a little more than could be explained by her head moving? Was her _back arching_? Was –

Her left arm tore itself out of Drakken's grip and smashed itself down onto the bedrail, shattering the plaster cast. There were gasps and shouts of surprise, but Drakken acted like he'd known this was coming, recapturing Kim's arm and putting down the bedrail.

Colleen Possible took that as her cue to do the same to the bedrail on her side, which was fortunate, as Kim chose that moment to begin thrashing in earnest.

The next few moments were the most bizarre combination of horrible and wonderful than anyone in the room could remember experiencing. Tubes, needles, and pins were torn out, bandages ripped off, braces broken and flung away. Kim screamed. She thrashed.

She _kicked_.

Dr. Drakken and Dr. Colleen Possible struggled to hold her down while Ron and Dr. James Possible struggled to hold the door closed against what seemed like several burly orderlies on the other side. The boy and the man started to slide backward across the floor, bulldozed by main force as the door edged open.

"Keep it closed! James, Ronald, for the love of God keep them out of here!"

Both pushed harder, but they were still being driven backwards. Then Ron gave a roar of effort, and power surged in his muscles. Shoulders. Legs. Back. Only he was at an angle to see the light that flared briefly beneath his hands, but his eyes were closed.

The door slammed shut, and there were cries of surprise and the sound of falling bodies on the other side of the door.

"We're being idiots," James Possible panted. "Boys!" He barked. "Chair!"

Finally given something to do, Jim and Tim Possible scurried across the room, grabbed one of the chairs from the bedside, and hurried it to their father, who jammed it under the door handle.

There was one final, shattering scream behind them. Then silence.

As one, the fourmembers of the male sexwho loved Kim Possible more than any others in the world ever could, turned to see.

She rose from the bed like a wounded Eve rising from the grass of a bleeding Eden, raw and new from the inside of Adam's ribcage. Like a broken Venus from a storm-wracked ocean. Like Athena, fresh and bloody from Zeus's skull.

She'd lost her gown in her struggles, but not even the most libido-driven of teenage boys could find her nakedness sexy now. Drakken's formula had not been a magical healing potion; it couldn't do everything. She was terribly thin and wasted, her body used up as repair materials for the nanobots. The left half of her body, from mid-calf to shoulder, was shiny and tight-skinned with burn scars. The _entire _right half was covered with an angry red webwork where the glass had cut her.

Still, as she took her first step forward, she was the most beautiful thing that any of them had ever seen.

She took another step, then faltered. All four adults in the room rushed forward to support her, but Drakken got there first. At first, when she turned to look at him, she was dazed. Then her eyes focused, and she drew back a trembling fist. He gently reached out and stayed it with his hand. "Don't waste your strength on me, Kimberly," he said. "You don't have much. Hug your family. Kiss your boyfriend. Beat me to within an inch of my life when you come for me and Shego, when you can actually hurt me."

Her eyes still blazing, so much so that he half-expected them to light up like Shego's, she lowered her hand.

"But I want a promise from you, Kimberly. I want it from you, because I don't trust anyone else in this room to keep it. I want you to swear to me that when you come for us, you will neither harm Shego, nor…" He looked darkly around the room. "Allow her to come to harm."

"Kim –"

Kim held up a trembling hand. "It's okay, Ron," She said. Then she turned her attention to Drakken. "I swear that if your plan is real, if you can give us an actual chance to capture Shego even with how powerful she's become, then we will. I won't hurt her any more than usual, or allow anyone else to." Her face darkened. "But I also swear to give you that beating you mentioned. Just to make up for it."

"Good enough," He said. "And I can give you that actual chance. Because we have one very important advantage: the new lair is very secluded. No TV. No magazine subscriptions. I monitored outside communications, but Shego didn't bother."

"So she watched DVDs for the last three weeks," Ron said. "How does that help us?"

Kim, on the other hand, understood. Her eyes had gone very wide. "Because Shego still thinks I'm dead."

"Right," Drakken nodded. "Now, I think I've delayed the family reunion long enough."

With that, he released her to totter, as she had when she was much younger, into the waiting arms of her mother. Then the Possible family descended on her in a weeping, hugging mass and the rest of the world went away.

----

Smiling grimly, Drakken stepped over the window and hit the "Call" button on a remote control that he'd taken out of another pocket. The hover-saucer would arrive in minutes. Good. Trying to leave through the hospital, even if his image inducer hadn't been broken in his fall, just wasn't going to happen. Just as well; the only picture he'd had for the image inducer to use was from college, and he'd hated it anyway.

He was pondering how well the afternoon had gone when he felt a tap on his shoulder.

"Yes?" He turned around, straight into a solid punch to the stomach. He turned around again just in time to vomit out the window instead of onto Ron Stoppable's shoes, or his own.

"Mr. Dr. P already got his chance," Ron said lightly, by way of explanation. "And you promised KP that she would get one. I just didn't want to miss mine."

Drakken spit out the window one last time, then turned back around, a hand on his stomach and a pained grin on his face. "Well, thank you for choosing someplace Shego wouldn't see, anyway. If she knew I'd been here, forget about the plan."

"See, here's what I'm wondering about your plan," Ron said. "What happens once we bring you in? Do you really think that you'll be able to arrange for a nice little hospital stay for your walking bomb? Do you think that the government will be as merciful as KP?"

"Merciful? No. Easier to bargain with? Yes. They dealt with Nazis for less than I have to offer. I could blow up schools every week and they'd let me go, as long as they weren't _American _schools, and I could hand them a vial of what I used on Kimberly here today. And I don't even want to be let go."

He wasn't even smug about it. Just matter-of-fact.

Ron wanted very much to show him what it was like to deal with someone who wasn't merciful and couldn't be bargained with. But no; eyes on the prize. Shego was the one who'd actually blown Kim up.

"If you have no other questions, Mr. Stoppable?" Drakken said. He was already halfway out the window, one foot in the hover-saucer that was floating outside.

"Actually, I do," Ron said.

Drakken actually stopped, looking at him expectantly.

"Since when is this you? Showing up here, all by yourself, knowing that we'll beat the shit out of you? That was almost brave. And you're talking like Mr. Dr. P, not some twelve-year-old who's trying to be cool. You invented something that works, even if you needed a little help, and you have what sounds like a halfway smart plan. What the Hell is going on?"

"I could ask you the same questions, Ronald. Maybe I'm going mad, too. Or maybe I'm going sane. Or maybe it's just that you and I are more alike than we like to think: utter buffoons with one person in all the world that we can pull ourselves together for."

Ron stared at him, his face a mask of horror and disgust.

"It's like Colleen said," Drakken said as he ducked the rest of the way out the window. "She's _my_ monster."


	5. Therapy

Kim was, of course, exhausted, and returned to her bed as soon as it could be tidied a bit. She immediately fell into a sleep that was nearly comatose in its own right (but oh, wondrous sight, she _slept on her side_ and, chilled by the air conditioning, _curled up _and _pulled the blankets to her chin_!), leaving her family to make the explanations. They even told the truth…with a few edits. Drakken became "a scientific genius who owed Kim", and the doors had been held closed because the process that had healed Kim was a delicate, easily-disrupted one.

Everyone wanted to take her home as soon as she woke up in the morning. Unfortunately, "everyone" also knew that wasn't a good idea. If nothing else, she had to be kept under observation for a few days to make sure that Drakken's process didn't have any side-effects. Instead, they brought her some underwear and pajamas from home, as well as a few books.

She didn't need the latter very much. As soon as visiting hours arrived, she didn't have a moment's boredom.

**Day One**

Drakken hadn't been kidding when he'd said "ravenously hungry". Kim had expected her stomach to be shrunken and easily-filled. Instead, it had seemingly been replaced by a furnace. She was finishing up her second breakfast (this one prepared by her mother instead of the hospital. Her third, prepared by Ron, was coming soon) when there came a knock at the door.

"Uh…hello?" A familiar voice called. "I'm looking for – "

Kim spun toward the door, her mouth full of the last of sausage wrapped in the last of the French toast, her fingers sticky with the last of the syrup. Her eyes went wide and she swallowed faster than she really should have.

"Wade?" She asked, astonished to see the preteen computer genius in the flesh.

"Kim!" Wade rushed to her side, then stopped. "Uh…will I hurt or infect you or anything if I touch you?" He asked.

Kim was too happy and excited to see him to look at him quizzically. "No, no, of course not, just let me get the sticky off my hands." She wiped her hands with a moist towlette that her mother had left for her (knowing her daughter's breakfast preferences), and then reached out for him.

He took the slender, pale hand in his dark, thick-fingered one.

"So what's the sitch, Wade?" She grinned. She could feel an unaccustomed pull as she did so, and she knew that the grin was marred by a scar across her lips, but she was too happy to see him to worry about that. Much.

"Kim, I…"

Then he surprised her. He took her hand in both of his, staring at it in a kind of wonder.

"Wade?"

"We were so worried for so long," he said, as much to himself as to her. "And I just couldn't bring myself to touch you while you were out. Everybody else would hold your hand, or stroke your hair, so I knew it was all right, but I was still afraid. It's like leaving my room, you know? I could only bring myself to do _that_ a couple of times, but I just _had _to visit you. And every time I did, I kept thinking that if we lost you, then I would have only met you for real once, on the same side of a computer screen."

Then…funny how such a simple thing could be such a wonder under the right circumstances…she _leaned_ _forward, reached out with her other hand_, and _clasped both of his_.

"Wade? Are you okay?"

That was when he shocked her. He pressed her hands – one too smooth, the other rough and ridged – to his cheeks and started to cry.

"So worried for so long," He sobbed. "And I never touched…all the handshakes, all the hugs…none, gone…"

Wade was _not_ okay. Wade was having a breakdown.

But maybe the breakdown could be the first step toward _being _okay. Wade was a ten-year-old boy. Much like the Tweebs, though she usually didn't (okay, never did) think of him that way. He was her friend. He cared about her. And he was taking comfort in a way that he had denied himself in the (could it really have been so long?) weeks that she had been...out.

First day back, and already somebody needed her help.

_I should probably feel imposed, but somehow this makes me feel better. I'm in the hospital and barely strong enough to walk to the bathroom, but somebody needs me. And I can handle this one._

She wasn't strong enough to pick Wade up, as she would have been a month ago. But she could still reach down and help him into the bed with her, then cradle him while he sobbed and stroke his back and whisper:

"It's okay…I'm here now. You didn't lose me."

----

Wade eventually calmed down, and after he swore her to secrecy about his little breakdown, he filled her in on all that had happened in the world of superheroes and villains while she was…gone.

Not much, as it turned out. Drakken's hospital visit had been the first anyone had heard of either him or Shego since the attack. Apparently, they'd actually managed to keep their secret lair secret for once. Dementor was back to ranting and raving, but he still preferred to do it from the safety of his cell. Duff Killigan was still in a deep depression after Ron's little accident with the terraformer. The Seniors were "preparing their defenses" for the next superhero (the game had no challenge without one, after all), Monkey Fist had disappeared almost as completely as Drakken, and if DNAmy was genetically engineering new Cuddlebuddies, they were mostly small and harmless (though a full-sized Pandaroo had been captured in a bamboo forest in mainland China).

Adrena Lynn was no longer much of a threat to anyone.

It was no more than a few minutes after Wade left, promising to keep her informed as always and to actually come visit again (for both their sakes), that Ron returned. He came bearing her third breakfast (more of a brunch by this point), and trailing her next two visitors behind him. His parents.

Of all the visits that Kim had that day, the one from the Stoppables was the only one that was awk-weird. They were glad to see her, and ecstatic that she was okay. Well, okay-ish. Better than anyone had dared to hope. They said all the comforting things that parents say to sick children, and all of the proud things that adults say to young heroes.

But still, something was wrong, and Kim didn't figure out what it was until after they left. She didn't talk about it with Ron. Yet.

----

The next set of visitors were a bit more relaxed.

----

"Kim!"

Monique crossed the room in two bounds, all but leaping into bed with Kim as she scooped the fragile white girl up into a fierce hug.

"Oh, I am so glad to see you, girl!"

Kim hugged back, as fiercely as she could. "And I'm glad to see you, too, Monique." After a moment, though, she had to add: "But oxygen is becoming an issue."

Monique laughed and let her go. "I have missed you so _much_, girlfriend! I have so much to tell you!"

"It's not about supervillains, is it?"

Monique looked at her like a dumber question had never been asked. "It's about _men_, girl. As in, I found me a good one."

"Ooh!" Kim squealed and clapped. "Spill!"

For a moment, if she ignored her surroundings, it was like the last month hadn't happened. She and Monique were just girls, and there was gossip to share.

"I can do better than that," Monique said. "I'll show you." She turned to the door. "You can come in now, Sugar," she sing-songed.

Felix, in a new wheelchair and smiling tolerantly at his girlfriend's theatrics, cruised in through the door. "Hey, Kim," he greeted her, bracing himself for the reaction they'd already gotten several times in the weeks they'd been together. Not the surprise that was currently occupying Kim's face – Monique had induced that deliberately, after all – but shock, confusion, and a bit of pity directed at Monique for having saddled herself with a cripple.

None of it came.

"Wow," Kim said. "You weren't kidding about finding a good one."

"You have no idea how good, girl." She grinned at Ron. "But _your_ boy will have an idea when I tell him that what he told me was absolutely right."

For some reason, Ron blushed to the roots of his hair, while Felix gave a proud little smile.

"Monique!" Ron squawked. "WTMFI!"

Monique's grin just broadened. "My man doesn't brag, so I have to do it for him."

"Well, I'm just glad you finally discovered him," Kim said. "And didn't take as long as I did with Ron."

"Amen, girl. I didn't have twelve years to waste."

"Make it five…no, four. It's only fair to count from when we both hit puberty."

"Fair enough."

During this conversation, Felix had cruised up to the side of Kim's bed, and began…surveying her was the only word Kim could really come up with. He was looking her up and down, as many males had before, but there was nothing sexual about it.

"Spinal damage," He said at last.

Both girls fell silent and stared at him blankly.

"What?" Kim said at last.

"Just go with it, KP," Ron said. "He's initiating you into the manly sport of comparing injuries. It's a gesture of honor."

"Oookay." _Oh, why not?_ "Can I try again?"

"Okay. Spinal damage."

She thought about it for a second. "Umm…massive scarring."

"You're still mobile," he countered.

Normally, Kim would have felt several different kinds of guilty and uncomfortable at that statement. This time…

"Yeah, but you're still pretty."

Felix beamed. "What do you know, she's a natural!"

Ron was standing behind her, so Kim didn't see that his smile was forced. When he said "This is KP, my man. She learns fast when there's competition involved." It sounded natural enough.

"Learn?" Kim said. "I've had to deal with Bonnie for how many years now? I know when it's all about the one-upmanship." She grinned at Felix. "But the way you do it is more fun."

"Even if I did win."

"Oh, you did, did you?" She narrowed her eyes at him. "Blasted by a supervillain," she challenged.

Felix stared at her for a moment, then sighed and dropped his head in surrender. "Hit by a car," he admitted. "Damn it, she really _is_ a natural."

She sat up proudly. "You should know better by now, Felix. I can do anything."

"Except enter a kitchen without causing structural damage," Ron said.

Monique and Felix laughed, but Kim just turned to face him. "But Ronnie…" She began. Then she hit him with a full force Puppy-Dog Pout from ambush. "You'd feed me, wouldn't you?"

"Aaahh! Yes! Yes! Of course! Just put it away! Put it away!" When he dared to open his eyes again, Kim's grin had returned to normal…well, as normal as it could anymore. "Not cool using that casually, KP," he growled.

She just grinned impishly at him and turned back to Felix and Monique.

"Competition or not, you shouldn't say things like that, girl," Monique said. "About still being pretty, I mean. So you got a couple scars…what do you think makeup is for? You've covered up zits before, right?"

"Cheerleaders don't get zits," Kim said automatically.

"Bet they don't fart, either," Monique retorted. "And they don't sweat, they _glow_."

"That's exactly right," Kim said, looking very serious for about ten seconds before bursting into giggles. When she was done giggling, she sighed. "It's okay, Monique," she said. "He's just trying to teach me how to be proud of my war wounds, guy-style. I mean, why should they be the only ones that get to beat their chests and howl?"

Monique gestured toward her breasts.

Kim looked down at her own.

"Other than the fact that that would hurt more…uh, point is, bragging fun! At least with friends! Now…speaking of bragging…I want to know what you were bragging to Ron about earlier…"

For the first time since Kim had known him, Felix actually blushed.

----

As happy as she was to have visitors, Kim didn't really have the energy to deal with them for long. Not that she would ever admit that, of course. She was seriously drooping by the time Felix and Monique excused themselves – promising to return the next day and insisting that yes, they really had to go, she needed to get some rest.

That being the case, Ron expected her to be asleep when he got back from walking Monique and Felix to the door (and just incidentally, filling them in on Drakken's cure and his deal along the way, and asking for their help in making sure Kim didn't kill herself with a Kimness-imposed recovery schedule). But she wasn't. She was sitting up, waiting for him. He'd seen that look on her face before. She was exhausted, but determined. There was something she needed to do before she crashed.

"Hey, KP," He greeted her. "Don't you think you need a nap?"

He expected an argument. Since when did anyone – let alone him – tell Kim Possible to slow down? Forget about stopping.

"Yes."

Okay, KP too exhausted for denial. Scary. Not the scariest thing he'd seen in the last few weeks, but scary nonetheless.

"But I wanted to talk to you first."

Nothing good ever came after 'I want to talk to you'. If people have something good to say, they don't feel the need to warn you about it.

"There's no hurry," he said quickly. "I'm not going anywhere. Well, I mean, you're dad's shift is starting soon, so in _that_ sense, I'm going somewhere, but in the larger sense – "

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about," she interrupted.

"What? Your dad's shift? Nothing I can do about it, KP. I know he keeps trying to play the games from the Rocket Booster PlayPak with you, but – "

"Ron."

Ron dropped his bluster with a sigh. "Yeah."

"I want to talk about…you going anywhere."

Ron took a deep breath and braced himself. _This is it. She's decided I wasn't worth what's happened to her, and she never wants to look at me again. _

"Yeah, KP?"

"Ron, I…" She paused. Then, incongruously, she started to sing: "Rock-a-bye Rufus, in the treetop…" She'd barely gotten to "When the bough breaks" before they both heard snoring coming from Ron's pocket and she broke off the song. "…I want this to be a private conversation."

Ron didn't want it to be. He wanted to wake Rufus up. He wanted some back-up, some moral support.

"Okay." _Here it comes._

"Ron, you're the best friend I could ever even imagine having."

_Here it…huh?_

"You stayed here three weeks, off and on. That's pretty impressive even for _family_. I don't know how many friends there are in the world who would do something like that."

"There must be some," he said. "Besides, it wasn't just visiting. There were security issues and stuff."

"I know," she said. "But still…I want you to know how grateful I am, and how, even if it hadn't already been the case, you're the best friend I've ever had in my life, and probably ever will."

Ron beamed, and he felt his heart starting to melt in his chest, but he didn't relax quite yet. "I hear a 'but' coming," he said.

Kim took a deep breath. "No 'but'. I just want you to know that…I understand completely if you want to go back to just being friends. A best friend like you is better than any boyfriend." She smiled at him, but the smile was terribly fragile.

Ron stared at her. In its way, this was even worse than what he'd feared. "KP…are you…are you breaking up with me?"

"No! Well, not exactly. I'm just saying that I understand if you can't see me 'that way' anymore…"

Ron scowled. "Sounds to me like you're asking _me_ to break up with _you_. Is that it?"

"Ron, please, that's not it at all."

"So you're _not_ trying to feed me to the black hole so you won't have to feel guilty about dumping me?"

"_No_! Ron, _please_ don't make this harder than it has to be!"

"Why should I make it easy? You're dumping me! You didn't make it easy on _me_ when I tried to dump _you_."

"I was moodulated! And this is way diff! I'm not the girl you took to the prom!"

"No? What's changed?"

"Ron, please, you're doing this on purpose..."

"No, seriously, what happened to make you a totally different person than the one I've known for the last thirteen years?"

"Ron, _please_ – "

She was in agony. And so was he. But this was something that had to be done – just like Mrs. Dr. P had done to him, and he had done to Monique.

"If you're going to dump me, you owe me that much."

"_I'm hideous, Ron!"_ She wailed. "I was pretty when we got together! Now I look like Frankenstein's monster! How can you ever look at me 'like that' again? I'd rather break up now than have you stay with me and pretend because you feel sorry until you can't take it anymore! I'd rather hold onto our friendship than lose everything. There! Are you happy that I said it?"

"No," he said. "I'm hurt and insulted that you think I'm that shallow. For crying out loud – first me, then Monique, now you. What is it about this thing that makes everybody want to give up?"

Kim looked away from him. "I don't think you're shallow. I just think there's a difference between 'giving up' and facing reality."

Ron fell silent for a moment, carefully considering what he would say next. "KP, have I ever lied to you?"

"Yes."

Oh. Right. "Well, uh, would I lie about something this important?"

"If you thought you were protecting me."

Damn it, she was right. But he had to make her believe. He reached out and took her face in his hands and made her look at him.

"KP, I swear on the Torah, the Bible, the Qur'an, the Rig Veda, the Kama Sutra – any book you want to use – that what I'm about to say is the truth."

Kim's eyes widened a little. She'd seen this side of Ron before, but she had a feeling that she was the only one who ever had. And even she hadn't seen it often. "Okay," she said.

"You are not hideous. You. Have. Scars. You are scarred. That sucks. But what I want you to believe me about is that _it doesn't matter_." Kim tried to shake her head, but he held it steady. "Don't take _my_ word for it. Your mother had three kids – two of them were twins. Does your father love her any less for the stretch marks?"

"Ron, this is way diff…"

"You're right! It is! Your scars aren't about other people, not even people that we made. You got those scars saving my personal life!"

That did it. Kim's eyes went wide as it finally hit home.

Certain that he wouldn't lose her attention now, Ron dropped his hands from her face and took up her hands in his instead. "Your enemies hate you whether you're pretty or not. Your friends, family, and the people you've saved could really not give less of a shit. And as for me…" He grinned. "You couldn't scare me away by turning into a _monkey_, so _this_ is nothing." His grin softened to a fond smile. "As long as those scars are part of your face, they're beautiful."

Tears stood in Kim's eyes, but didn't flow. Instead, she took her hands out of his and held out her arms, inviting. Ron did his best to ignore their trembling and leaned in for the kind of kiss that he'd been planning to wait a few more days for, just in case she was too weak to survive more than three weeks' worth of backlog passion. Oh, well, if she needed one now, he was happy to oblige. They broke off the kiss much sooner than they once would have – Kim didn't have much wind these days – but Ron believed that he'd gotten the point across.

There was a smile on her face as she sat back in her bed. It wasn't nearly as fragile as her smile had been before, but it was saddish and strange. He didn't think she believed yet that it didn't matter, or even that it didn't matter to him. But she did believe that he loved her anyway. It was a start.

"Have I told you yet today how wonderful you are?" She asked.

He grinned down at her. "Actually, you told Monique, which is even better, but I wouldn't mind hearing it again."

"You're the most wonderful boyfriend a girl ever had."

"Glad the service meets with your approval."

After a moment's smiling silence, he took her hand again. "So what's got you so tweaked about this?" He asked. "Did you think I hadn't noticed they were there?" He paused, his face clouding over. "Was it the whole comparing thing with Felix? I didn't think that was the best of ideas."

She shook her head. Slowly. Her purpose spent, she was starting to drift off. "Felix is sweet, and the bragging was kind of fun. I think I like the boy way better than the girl way – building yourself up instead of tearing each other down."

Ron was still frowning, and she languidly raised her free hand and touched his lips. "It's not like my scars will go away if I ignore them, Ron. He was just trying to teach me a new way to deal with them. He understands more than anyone else how I want to be treated just like…well, anyone else. He's just being proactive about it."

She dropped her hand back to her covers. Her eyes started to drift closed, but she was clearly trying to keep them open just…a little…longer. "It wasn't him, anyway…it was a lot of things…this morning, they tried to hide it, but your parents…they were so scared. They couldn't stop thinking 'there but for the Grace of God goes our son'. "

Ron stiffened, but she squeezed his hand. "Don't be mad. Just don't go anywhere…you know…in the larger sense…"

"Don't worry, KP. Nothing's going to take me away from you."

But she was already asleep.

Ron watched her sleep,and he tried...

Something genuinely Good had just happened. Painful, but Good. He held her hand, and he stroked her hair, and he listened to her regular breathing, and he tried tolive in the Now, wherethe relief and happiness lived.

Tried to. Couldn't.

----

Kim woke up feeling like her bladder was about to pop. Her body was burning all the food she wolfed down like she was throwing it into an incinerator, but all the milk and juice and water and soda she used to wash it down had to go _somewhere_.

She didn't want to be awake. She didn't want to get out of bed. But she didn't want to use a bedpan, either, and she didn't even want to _think_ of how such functions had been taken care of when she hadn't been _able_ to wake up or get out of bed.

She hoped that whoever took that fucking picture got his camera shoved up his ass sideways by some celebrity's bodyguard.

Worry about that later. Right now, she was faced with a choice between getting up, calling a nurse, or wetting the bed. Of the three, option 'A' was the lesser evil. She lowered the bedrail – trying not to make noise, trying not to wake her father, he was so tired and asking him to help her get to the bathroom would be so humiliating…

For the same reason, she tried not to whimper as she slowly rolled off the bed and put her feet on the floor. It felt like some lunatic had hollowed the marrow out of her bones and stuffed them with ground glass instead.

Taking a deep breath, she lifted her weight off the bed. One step. Two. Three. Four. Her whole body trembled and her bladder throbbed with each step she took. Her own weight, reduced as it was, was too much for her to carry.

She wasn't going to make it. Her father would be awakened by the sound of her hitting the floor, and find her in a puddle of her own urine.

_God, no. _

There was a railing attached to the wall between the bed and the bathroom. Probably for this very reason.

One more step.

_Throb._

Two.

_Throb._

She stumbled, almost fell. Grabbed for the railing. Caught it. Caught herself. Leaned heavily.

Great. So much better. Dad would wake up to find her _standing_ in a puddle of her own urine.

_Not going to happen._

She gritted her teeth and took the last few steps.

With a shadow of her former grace, she turned on the light, closed the door (_slammed_ the door – probably woke Daddy up after all), dropped her pants and sat down all in one spinning, falling motion.

Two kinds of relief flooded through her…and then she started to cry.

She was lucky, she told herself. So fantastically, unimaginably lucky. She kept telling herself that, and it was true. When she'd awakened yesterday, she'd been quadriplegic. Tonight, she had gotten up out of her bed and gone to the bathroom on her own. In a few minutes, she would get back up and go back to bed. Every other time in the history of the world that such a thing had happened, it had been a religious miracle. She was terribly weak – the body that had always been her tool, her weapon, her instrument for _doing_ _anything_ – was now a burden. But that would pass. And it could have been a prison. She was so very lucky.

But sometimes, the pain and the exhaustion and the fact that you need all of your strength to cross a room when you _should_ be able to backflip down the hall and God _damn _it you're hungry _again_ get to be too much. The truth that you're lucky isn't enough. That's when you cry.

In the following weeks, Kim came to learn that truth very, very well. Each time she gorged herself until she felt like her stomach was going to split, then found herself ravenous again half an hour later; each time she choked down some awful-tasting protein or calcium supplement because even that rate of consumption didn't replenish her hastily-repaired muscles and bones quickly enough; each time she looked into the mirror and saw a gaunt, raw-faced stranger there; every time her 'unbelievably fast recovery' meant that she could _almost_ do something that she had taken for granted before…each time was another lesson.


	6. Complications

Lord Monty Fiske was not a sane man. Most men in his position would deny this, claim to be one of the few truly sane people on Earth. However, he didn't just acknowledge his insanity, he reveled in it. True, most people that the world called "insane" were invalids, people whose illness damaged their minds and warped their perceptions. But he had dared, like a few other truly great souls in history had dared, to leave the sheltering prison of sanity willingly. He had faced the truths that the "sane" couldn't face. Like Ezekiel, his was the madness that touched the Holy. And soon, he would share that madness with the world.

Holding the Ancient Text, he stepped to the edge of his throne-dais. "Today, my Monkey Minions," He began. "Our true destiny begins to unfold!" He raised the Ancient Text over his head, and the monkey ninjas began to screech and leap about in excitement.

Slowly, Monkey Fist lowered the Ancient Text and hugged it to his chest. "All this time, I've been trying to become the Monkey King, never realizing how much of a blasphemy that was. There is only one Monkey King – he who even the gods could not control. With this book," he lovingly stroked the Ancient Text's spine. "I shall break the bindings that the Buddha placed upon him, and unleash his chaos upon the world. Only _we_ – " He waved an arm at the room, indicating his simian followers. "His true disciples, shall be left standing. We shall dance in the streets as the cities begin to burn, and we shall rule in the ruins when they've crumbled."

"Yeah, see, I'm gonna have to disagree with you on that point, chief."

Monkey Fist's head snapped toward the doors. "Ron Stoppable!" He shouted.

"You still remember my name. I appreciate that. If you can guess my little buddy's name right…" He fished Rufus out of his pocket. The naked mole rat waved and chattered 'Hello'. "…You'll have the whole set. I'll still have to kick your ass, though."

"Spare me your stale attempts at humor," Monkey Fist said, looking around the room. "Where's the cheerleader?"

"Oh, come on. Don't tell me you know _my _name, but can't remember _hers!_ And you were doing so well!" Then Ron's face turned serious. "We don't waste Kim's time on milk runs like this," he said.

Rufus shook his head. "Unh-uh, unh-uh."

"Oh, no?" Monkey Fist asked with exaggerated, mock politeness. "And it has nothing whatsoever to do with her ability to handle such milk runs? Or lack thereof?"

Ron bristled. "She could kick your hairy biscuit on her worst day."

"And she's had some pretty bad days lately, hasn't she? I saw the pictures in the paper."

"You don't want to go there, Monkey Freak."

"She's looking quite hideous these days. Are you back to being 'just sidekicks'? Or are you staying with her out of pity? I suppose the latter would have more benefits than it might seem at first – it must be much easier to get into her knickers now that she doesn't have any other options."

Ron was beyond bristling. It looked like he was about to charge: his head was lowered, his shoulders were up, and he was glaring like a bull watching a flapping cape. "You know, all this talk about ugliness would be a lot more hurtful if it wasn't coming from DNAmy's man-bitch."

Monkey Fist growled and bared his teeth.

"So are we done throwing poop at each other?" Ron asked. "Can we get down to business now?"

Monkey Fist forced his snarl back into an expression of aristocratic disdain. "I don't have time for this," he sniffed. "Monkey ninjas, attack."

What happened next wasn't a "fight" so much as it was "animal abuse." The lead monkey ninja was punted into a wall halfway across the room. The next was snatched out of the air in mid-leap and slammed into the floor. Two tried to grab Ron's arms and got their heads knocked together for their trouble.

In their desperation, the next wave started pulling weapons. That's when it got ugly.

Less than thirty seconds after Monkey Fist gave his command, half of the monkey ninjas lay unconscious at Ron Stoppable's feet. The other half were retreating to a safe distance, hands and weapons raised into frightened, defensive positions.

Monkey Fist raised an eyebrow and set the Ancient Text back on its podium. "It seems that your rage has allowed you to tap into the Mystic Monkey Power more than ever before." He grinned nastily. "Or is that your frustration?"

"It still comes and goes," Ron said, still in a guard stance. "But believe me, it's here right now."

Monkey Fist took a guard stance of his own. "It takes more than instinct and attitude to defeat a true master of Monkey Kung Fu, boy."

"Rufus," Ron said, not taking his eyes off his opponent. "Can you handle the cleanup here?"

Rufus popped out of his pocket, slid down his leg, snatched up an escrima stick from one of the fallen monkey ninjas, spun it about in a display of his staff-skill, then snapped into a ready position back-to-back with Ron's back foot.

"Hahhh!"

"Good. Okay, monkey-boy." Ron held a hand out toward his opponent and made a 'come here' gesture. "Bring."

----

Monkey Fist learned a great deal from their first exchange. First, he learned that he'd been absolutely right: the buffoon had little training, little experience, and no discipline.

The second thing he learned was that, unfortunately, he had _also _been right about the boy's rage driving him to tap more deeply into the Mystic Monkey Power than ever before, which rather negated the advantage he might have gained from his first set of discoveries. Stoppable wasn't a _complete _incompetent, and there were limits to just how much raw power could be overcome by skill and experience. Elementary kicks and basic punches came at him in an avalanche, each one faster than he'd ever imagined the boy could be capable of, each one like blocking a sledgehammer. He was being driven back across his own throne room.

Perhaps taunting Stoppable about the Cheerleader had been a mistake.

No. He was a true master of Monkey Kung Fu. He would _not_ be intimidated by a novice who'd somehow gotten hold of more power than he deserved.

Time to take the offensive.

Monkey Fist leaped over a leg sweep, ducked a roundhouse, and launched a jab to Stoppable's solar plexus. Ron shifted slightly, and the blow thumped harmlessly against his chest, a slight grunt the only sign he even felt it. He retaliated with a high spin kick, which was just what Monkey Fist had been waiting for. Instead of blocking the blow, the monkey master caught it and stepped about into a spin, using the boy's own momentum to hurl him across the room.

There. That bought him some time. Not much. Stoppable had rolled on impact and was already up on his feet.

He would _not_ be intimidated. He had Mystic Monkey Power of his own. Hadn't he taken a horde of monkeys who were unaware of their own potential greatness, awakened their minds, and made them his disciples? Taught them the Way of the Ninja and bound them to his will? It was a binding that had only been loosened once – for a short time – by his own absence and the presence of another wielder of the Mystical Monkey Power: Stoppable. An insult that had yet to be redressed.

Oh, yes. He had power of his own. And he would teach this pretender what that meant.

Stoppable was charging, almost upon him again. Deciding not to wait, Fist launched a flying kick into his face.

The boy stopped short, his head snapping back and blood flying from his nose. Monkey Fist had a momentary flash of satisfaction in finally making the little bastard _bleed_, but as he was dropping to the floor, Stoppable jabbed him in the thigh with two fingers, and the leg went as stiff and rigid as an icicle.

Monkey Fist hit the flagstones hard, and the satisfaction evaporated, blown away by fear.

That hadn't been a pressure point that Stoppable had struck. How…?

No.

It wasn't a _physical _pressure point that Stoppable had struck. It was an acupuncture point. The boy was using Mystical Monkey Power to disrupt his _chi_.

"No," Monkey Fist groaned, raising himself up with his arms. "It's not possible. You _can't_ know how to do that. Even I can't – "

"Shut up, Monty," Stoppable snapped, jabbing him at the base of his neck with the same two fingers.

Lord Monty Fiske's entire body went rigid.

Stoppable reached down and turned him over. On his back, he felt even more helpless than before. He couldn't move. He couldn't speak. He could barely blink. All he could do was stare up at his captor.

"You know," Stoppable said. "I had this same conversation with Duff Killigan almost two months ago. About how you super-psychos are all about take, take, take, and how much it pisses me off that you took me away from Kim, even for a little while. But you did something even worse than that: you mocked Kim for what was taken away from her. My solution stays the same, though:" He said, reaching down and picking up a fallen katana from the floor. "Take something away from _you_." He hefted the katana experimentally, then took a firmer grip. "Something that you actually care about, so you know what it's like for the rest of us." He made a few idle moves with the sword, then turned his attention back to his prisoner. His eyes were ice. "You spent your whole family fortune on getting your hands and feet freakified, didn't you?"

Monkey Fist's eyes widened as Ron Stoppable took a firm, two-handed grip on the katana and stepped toward him. He tried to beg for mercy, but all he could do was whimper.

Ron drew the sword back and swung.

"Hnyyaaaah!"

Something tiny and pink came flying across the room and struck Stoppable's katana in mid-swing, knocking it just far enough off-course to leave Monkey Fist with a bleeding scratch on his left wrist instead of an empty stump.

With a snarl of rage, Stoppable drew the sword back for another swing, but then the boy's naked mole rat was standing on Fiske's chest, holding his escrima stick in a blocking position, chattering "Unh-uh, unh-uh!"

For one wild moment, Monkey Fist was _certain_, utterly convinced, that the boy was going to simply cut the animal in two before getting back to the business of mutilating him. If it had been one of his monkey ninjas, that was surely what would have happened.

Instead, Stoppable took a deep breath, let it out, and visibly calmed. "You're right, Rufus," he said. "That's going a bit too far for a first offense." Without warning, the tip of the sword darted forward three more times, leaving bleeding scratches much like the first at each wrist and ankle. "Consider that your warning shot, dude."

Monkey Fist relaxed – as best he could – with a shuddering sigh. He offered a silent prayer of thanks to the Monkey King, both for his survival and for the fact that he'd been able to keep control of his body functions.

"But still, I don't think a warning is enough. I still think I need to take something away from you for real." Stoppable looked around the room for a moment. Then his face lit up. "_There_ we go!" He said. He walked to the wall and took down a torch, then he turned and strode out of the monkey master's line of sight.

Monkey Fist instantly knew what he was doing. He screamed with force he hadn't been able to muster for himself. "_NNNNNHHH! NNNNHHH!_"

"Dude, you're mumbling. I can't understand a word."

The crackle of burning paper.

Monkey Fist's jaws finally unlocked. "No! Not the Ancient Text! The knowledge it contains is irreplaceable!"

"Good thing, too," Ron said. "And you never learned this thing's actual title? I guess you're not as good at the name thing as I thought."

----

A half hour later, a near-catatonic Monkey Fist was led away in largely unnecessary handcuffs by Global Justice agents. Most of the monkey ninjas were carried out.

As Ron watched them go, he tried to feel a sense of triumph over defeating his own personal arch-nemesis so totally. Tried to. Couldn't.

Instead, he just turned to Rufus, who was standing on his shoulder. "Nice job playing the Good Cop, little buddy," he said. "I had to make it look realistic if I was really going to scare him, but you picked up your cue perfectly."

Rufus just gave his human a long, suspicious look. Finally, he said "Mmmkay," and climbed down to his pocket, but even that sounded dubious.

Oh, well. Some things you couldn't expect a naked mole rat to understand.

**Hero's Welcome**

Ron trudged in the front door of his house. He'd been out since late last night, and sleeping in the plane was never really good enough.

Oh, well, it wasn't that late in the morning. In fact, by his standards, it was practically the crack of dawn. He could still grab a few hours' sleep, go over and see KP later, and she'd never be the wiser.

"Hey, mom, I'm home!" He called. "I'm just gonna go up and take a nap."

"Your mom had to go into work today," A familiar voice behind him said. "But she said I could stay here and wait for you to get back."

Oh, snap.

----

Ron slowly turned to face KP where she stood, leaning in the living-room doorway. Normally, he would have been happy – nay, overjoyed – to see her. Six weeks of (vast) diet and exercise had worked wonders upon her: she'd filled out to nearly where she'd been before the last day of school, so she just looked like someone who'd had the flu for a week or two, rather than an "after" picture of an anorexia victim.

Oh, yes. Normally, he'd be happy. As much as it worried him that she was wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt, full-length jeans, gloves, and a scarf despite the late-August heat, he would still be happy.

But right now, her arms were crossed, her eyes were hard, and her lips were set in a thin, angry line.

It didn't take thirteen years of friendship to tell him that he was in serious trouble.

"KP, I can explain."

"You can do it after I finish," she snapped.

Ron swallowed hard.

"I had an idea when I got up this morning," She began. "I would come over here, wake you up with kisses – exactly _where_ I would kiss you would depend on whether your parents were home or not – and then take you out to breakfast. I knew it was early for you, but I thought it would be a nice change of pace for our dates. Besides, you've spent so much time feeding me since I got out of the hospital, I wanted to pay you back a little. But then, I get here, and your mother tells me you've gone to run an errand. I'm a little surprised that you're up so early, but no big. I just call up Wade," she pulled her cell phone out of her pocket. "And ask him if he knows where you are, so I can go meet you." If it was possible (and wasn't anything, for a Possible?), her eyes went harder. "Imagine my surprise when he said Madagascar."

"Imagine," He said weakly.

"Funny thing," she continued. "He was surprised I didn't know. He thought we'd _agreed_ that I wasn't ready to go on missions yet."

Ron tilted his head uncomfortably and rubbed his neck. "Yeah, funny thing."

She glared at him. "I'm done now, Ron. Now's your chance to explain."

"See, KP," He began. "I didn't want to bother you. It was really an easy one, and I thought I could just take care of it myself."

"But if it was an easy one, that's all the more reason for me to go!" Kim protested.

"Huh?"

"Start me off easy, get me back into the swing."

Ron frowned. "KP, you're not _ready_ to get back in the swing."

Kim frowned right back. "I _need_ to be ready, Ron. Drakken's buying as much time for us as he can, but we don't know when it'll run out."

"Yeah, about that – "

Kim had no interest in arguing over the plan again. "Ron," she interrupted. "I don't trust Drakken any more than you do, and I promise you that I like him even less. But his stuff worked. My body is healed. What I need is to build it back up again."

"Says you?" Ron challenged.

"Says my mom," Kim retorted.

"Okay," Ron said. "So what you need is building. We've been working out and sparring for a month. Isn't that building?"

"It's not the same and you know it," Kim snapped. "If I'm ever going to get back into climbing walls and crawling through ventilation ducts and swinging on my grappling line, I need to practice! I can't stay on the bench forever! If this one was _so _easy – "

"It wasn't easy, alright!" Ron burst out. "It was Monkey Fist!"

That gave Kim pause, but only for a moment. "Okay, so it was Monkey Fist. I still could've come with you."

"_What?_"

"You can stop yelling at me now, Ron. I know I'm not 100 percent – "

"Try not even close!"

Kim ignored him and bulled on. " – but I could still have helped! Taken out a few monkey ninjas, grabbed the Ancient Text – something!"

"No. Monkey Freak was even more whacked-out than usual. It would've been too dangerous."

"If you and Rufus did it alone, I think you would've been okay with me there."

Angry as he was, Ron paused. What he was about to say would hurt her. But it needed to be said. "Or maybe not," He said. "Maybe with you there, needing help and protection, it wouldn't have worked as well. Maybe you would've been in the way."

Kim froze. He took the opportunity to explain further:

"You can't let your Kimness set the recovery schedule, KP. You could do anything before, and you will again, but you can't right now, and trying before you're ready will just get you hurt. And let's face it, you've never been exactly the best judge of that, have you? Remember that time you got hit by that stuff that made you disappear when you blushed, and went out on a date with Mankey anyway? Or even that time you got so sick 'cause you went on a mission with a cold? You need to trust other people on this."

"Like you?" Her voice was little more than a whisper, but it shook with such anger and hurt that it silenced Ron more effectively than a shout.

"Well…uh…yeah."

Her eyes blazed up into his. Green fire almost as deadly as Shego's. "I'm not going to tell you again how I'm not the one setting the schedule _at all_," She said in that same quiet, deadly voice. "And this is the last time I'm going to tell you that it wasn't _me_ who said I was okay – it was my mother, my own doctor, and three other doctors at the hospital who _still _can't believe how fast I'm recovering. Instead, let me tell you about something _I_ remember. I remember someone who used to come along on all of _my_ missions, no matter who I was fighting. Someone who wasn't a very good fighter. Someone who could be clumsy or noisy, who kept losing his pants and falling down. That guy needed rescuing and protecting and he got in the way _a lot_ – "

"And that was your mistake, wasn't it, KP?" His voice the same deadly quiet.

"What?"

"That was your mistake. That's where you really went wrong. That's what got you where you are right now, isn't that right?"

"What? _No!_"

"Go on, KP. You can say it. I've seen it in your eyes when I win one too many sparring matches, or a workout that you could've sleepwalked through before hurts too much for you to go on. Let it out."

"Ron, I'm not going to – "

"_Say it!"_

"_No!_ Even if I _did_ think it for a second or two at some point in the last six weeks, it wouldn't make me feel any better to say it now, because _I don't mean it_! Not everyone says everything that comes stomping through their brain, Ron!"

He had no answer to that.

Instead, they both stood there for a long moment, staring at each other. Hearts pounding, breathing hard, their bodies revving up for a reaction they never thought they'd feel toward each other.

Fight or flight.

She was the one who finally broke the silence, in a way that somehow managed to catch him completely off-guard. She held out her hand and said: "Give me back the Kimmunicator, Ron."

"What?"

"You heard me. We've both gone on solo missions before, sometimes without telling each other. You didn't want to ruin my Christmas, and I didn't want to ruin your vacation. Fine. But you're deliberately keeping me out of the loop, and that's not cool. Give."

Ron took a deep breath, and his face became very determined. He reached down and buttoned the pocket that held the Kimmunicator. He could even meet her eyes and hold strong if he focused on the scar across the right one where a piece of glass had nearly taken it out.

"No."

Kim felt her hands trembling with anger. He wasn't going to give it to her, and if she tried to get it back, she might do something that she would regret. Instead, she took a deep breath. "Ron…there've been a lot of times I've tried to…well, I usually thought I was helping you. Sometimes I was right, sometimes I was wrong. But the one time I tried to change you to suit myself – remember, the time with your hair, the time I actually came out and said that I knew what was best for you? I was wrong. And so are you."

With that, she turned and opened the front door. But just before she walked out, she turned back to him.

"Oh. And one other thing you're wrong about: what I was _going_ to say is that, in spite of all the falling and the pants-dropping and the getting in the way, I _never_ left you behind."

Slam.

----

He wanted to run after her, stop her, explain it all to her. How scared they'd all been, for how long. How certain he was that he'd killed his best friend, or destroyed her life. How determined he was to make sure that nothing like that ever happened again. How he had sworn to protect her from anything and everything – even herself.

Wanted to. Couldn't.

----

Kim snapped her cell phone open as soon as the door closed behind her and hit speed dial. The person on the other end picked up on the first ring, as she'd expected he would.

"Wade."

"Hey, Kim, I – "

"How much did you hear?" She demanded, cutting him off.

"Uh…all of it," he said sheepishly. "I was worried, so I turned on the Kimmunicator's microphone as soon as Ron's chip reached his house."

"Am I going to have to throw a blanket over my computer every time I change my clothes after you hit puberty?"

"Kim!" The hacker sounded decidedly insulted. "I've sworn to only use my powers for good! You know that."

"Except when you're deleting all references to broccoli from your mom's files."

"Well – "

"Tell me again when you hit twelve or thirteen and your hormones destroy your brain. But forget that for now. You heard it all. Which one of us is out of line?"

There was a long silence. She didn't ask again. She knew that Wade didn't deserve snapping-at. She just kept speed-walking, trying to burn off some of her adrenaline. It wasn't enough, of course. She was going to have to pound on the punching bag in her basement dojo and do backflips across the yard for a while once she got home. Then, of course, she would cry. But first things first.

Finally, Wade spoke. Very, very carefully. "Well…there's no single point you made that I can dispute. Everything you said is true. But he's not the only one who's worried about you, Kim."

She glared at the phone for a second – a habit from using the Kimmunicator – then put it back to her ear with a sigh of frustration. Okay. So Ron was the one being irrational. She'd demand an apology for it later, but right now it was a problem she had to solve. Maybe if she could get _behind_ it somehow…

"Wade, this is what I need you to do:"

**The Timer Reaches Zero**

"Very well, Shego, that's enough for today."

Shego stopped pouring fire into the target at the end of the reinforced chamber – it was specifically designed to absorb and measure her blasts, but she could tell that it was about to melt down, just like the last sixteen – and wiped the sweat off her brow with a smoking hand.

"Is this really necessary, Dr. D?" she asked, speaking in the general direction of Drakken's control room.

"I'm afraid it is, Shego," He answered over the intercom. "If I'm to use your increased power in my plans for world conquest, I must know its limits."

"Since when have you waited until you had a clue about something before you tried to use it?"

"Hurting with our words, Shego."

Sighing and rolling her eyes in disgust, she walked over to a bench by the door, picked up the towel she'd left there, wiped the back of her neck, then took a drink from a water bottle. "So do you know the limits yet or not?"

"Just a few more tests, Shego. Rome wasn't conquered in a day. Now hit the showers. Like I said, we're done for today."

Shego considered snapping back at him, but decided not to bother. She was going to take a shower anyway, after all. Instead, she just took another drink, dabbed the sweat off her face, and left the room.

----

Alone in his control room, Drakken looked at the readings for Shego's latest 'test' with deep worry.

They were running out of time. No more than a week ago, a session this prolonged and intense would have given Drakken a visit from 'Sheila'. No sign of it now. He'd been buying time for weeks, trying to give Kim Possible a chance to heal while draining off Shego's excess power and maybe even gathering some data that could help her in the longer term. Judging from her behavior (lazy and sullen rather than eager and murderous) and various brainscan readings he'd been able to take without her knowing, it had worked to some degree. But now they were coming to the crisis point. She was regenerating her energy too quickly. Any day now, any advantage gained from Kim Possible's recovery would be rendered irrelevant by Shego's increasing power.

He would have to find a reason to get the henchmen that he'd had to hire lest Shego get suspicious (another purpose for the constant tests and experiments was to insulate her from whatever news a bunch of ignorant thugs might carry. Not that her own tendency to ignore them unless she was giving them orders didn't do that already) out of the lair, and soon, so that Kim Possible wouldn't have to fight her way through them on her way to Shego.

If he guessed wrong on this, if he waited even a day too long – in short, if he made one of the mistakes that tended to ruin his other plans – Armageddon could begin three doors down the hall from his bedroom.

He didn't like that idea.

Unfortunately, all of his uncharacteristic diligence and care was about to be undone by one of the bits of bad luck that tended to ruin his plans when his own carelessness did not.

----

His name was Gregory Lawson, and he was a cut above the dumb, obedient thugs that Drakken usually hired. Where _they_ might have gladly participated in Shego's suggested method of breaking Kim Possible's spirit if Drakken had ordered it, _he _might very well have taken it upon himself if he'd been in the mad scientist's employ any time that the teen hero had been captured. That was the kind of Man of Initiative that Gregory Lawson was.

Yes sir, Destined For Greatness, was Gregory Lawson. At the very least, he was going to rise through the ranks at this creampuff operation like he was riding a rocket-sled.

But he had other problems to deal with right now. Primary among them was the fact that he hadn't ridden _anything_ for weeks. Yes sir, yes sir, Gregory Lawson needed to get laid. Needed it bad. Problem was, the boss didn't seem to believe in shore leave. And why should he care? It was no skin off his ass. The only woman on the island was his bitch, after all.

Oh, they tried to pretend otherwise, act like she was just another skullbuster, but who did they think they were fooling? Did they think anyone would actually believe that they spent all day in that lab testing those blaster-gloves or whatever the hell they were? Please. Who would use a woman to test a weapon?

And then there was the thing the two of them had going with the body paints. What the hell was up with that?

Unfortunately for the Boss, old Greg Lawson did not hold with that. No sir. He did not appreciate one man hoarding all of something to himself while others went without. And if Greg Lawson happened to be one of those others, he generally just took whatever it was that was being hoarded.

If the freaky bitch had a brain in her skull, she'd never tell the Boss about it. Sure, he might be pissed at old Greg, but the dumb cunt would be tossed out like any other damaged goods.

And if the Boss _did_ find out, well…this _was _a creampuff operation. Maybe old Greg's destined rise through the ranks would have to happen a little faster, and end up with him on top. Maybe if Doc Drakken was lucky, he'd get to stay on and make weapons for a man who knew how to get his damn priorities in order.

----

Shego was hot, tired, and sweaty. Those tests Dr. D ran her through were designed to wear her out, see how much she could take, and they did that very well. Not as well as they used to – a few times, they'd actually caused those weird blackouts that were the primary reason Dr. D was hesitant to just use her as his latest doomsday weapon. But not lately. Lately, she didn't tire out nearly as much, and she felt better much faster. Still, an afternoon of blasting away with her plasma like that was just as tiring as an afternoon of fighting Kimmie would have been in the old days (she felt a momentary pang of regret, then quickly crushed it. The silly little girl had known the risks when she'd gotten in her way).

She pulled off her gloves and tugged at the collar of her fighting suit, trying to let some air in. It was summer weight, but it was still a full-body suit, and she was still roasting. She couldn't wait to get the damn thing off and get a cool shower.

She was just punching in her room's combination when somebody snatched her gloves out of her hand.

She whirled on the henchman standing behind her. She'd known he was there, of course, but she'd ignored him. Unless he was there to deliver a message (or something) for Dr. D or receive some orders from her, he was a part of the scenery. He loomed over her, bigger than most, a nasty grin on his face.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" She demanded. "Give those back."

His grin just broadened. "I don't think you're in a position to be giving orders right now, little missy."

Her eyes narrowed. "Uh, no, see, that's where you're mistaken. I _always_ give the orders. You always follow them. That's how – "

"Not this time," he said, overriding her. "Your man isn't around to give whatever comes out of that pretty mouth any weight."

She could only stare at him. This was stupidity on a scale that she'd never imagined existed before. And considering who her elder brother was, that was saying a lot. Forget the part about where this idiot thought Dr. D was 'her man', insulting as that was. Let's look at the important part:

"You think I only have authority because of Dr. D?"

"If you think otherwise, you're even dumber than I thought," the henchman said.

Shego rolled her eyes and shook her head. "This is what happens when I don't get the chance to give those first couple instructive ass-kickings. They get all uppity." She sighed and held out her hand. "Look, you're not even worth the wit. Just give back the gloves before you get hurt worse than you're already going to."

"You have any brains under that hair, girl? Blue Boy ain't here, and you may be all sorts of dangerous with these gloves on, but I've got 'em now."

And yet further unsuspected depths of stupidity. "You think my glow comes from my _gloves_?"

The henchman didn't even seem to hear her. "So let me tell you what's going to happen here, sweetcheeks: you and I are going to have a little fun. Well, I am. You might, if you just lie back an enjoy it – I can give you things that blue-painted geek never could – but _I'm_ going to, one way or the other. So you just open that door, and we'll go in and get to it."

Rage didn't just _flare_ in Shego, it _exploded_. Volcanoes erupted and stars went nova in her chest. This wasn't just some schoolyard bully of a minion thinking he could play keep-away. That would have earned him some hospital time, but this…

He either hadn't heard of her hard-earned reputation, or he didn't believe it. If he even knew about her skills, he discounted them completely. All of her accomplishments (_I'm the one who took down Kim Possible, damn it!_) meant nothing. She was just a pussy to him. A walking R&R.

"Uh-huh, that's an interesting idea, but I have a counter-offer for you: you give those gloves back and do a _real_ good job of groveling and begging for forgiveness, and I _might_ let you live. No promises about keeping your balls, though."

The henchman didn't lose his grin. In fact, it had become a broad, benevolent smile.

"I see you need a little lesson, first. No problem, that's always fun, too."

No doubt that other women he'd "taught" in the past had actually been caught off-guard by the close-fisted backhand that he swung at her. For her, it was like fighting an oil painting.

She ducked under it and turned her duck into a spin. She came around, bringing a hand up to–

_Fssh_

_CHUNK!_

Gregory Lawson and Shego both froze.

Her hand was buried in his gut like some five-tined war-fork. The flaming tips of a few fingers stuck out his back, burning a hole in his uniform.

Gregory Lawson had just enough time to look down into the eyes of the boss's bitch, those brown-flecked green eyes, and make a few gasping, gagging noises.

Then his eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed like a marionette with cut strings.

Shego stood there, silent and shaking, staring at her flaming hand as the blood on it cooked to a black glaze, then cracked and flaked off.

She'd killed him. She'd rammed her hand into his belly and cooked his innards.

She had carefully cultivated a reputation of being capable of vast destruction at the slightest provocation. It had been as important to her survival in the criminal underworld as her martial arts skills and her comet powers. True, she'd mostly built that reputation as a thief and bodyguard for Dr. D, but…

_So why am I shaking? Why should I care that I…that he's…_

_**Maybe it isn't that easy to get used to murder?**_

_Murder? This wasn't murder, this was burning some trash!_

**_He was a man. And now he's dead. Because of you._ **

_Yeah, he was a man! A man who was going to _rape _me, in case you didn't notice! This was pure self-defense!_

_**You didn't have to kill him to defend yourself.**_

_Maybe not, but he deserved it!_

_**Maybe he did. Did Kim Possible?**_

_What? What's going on? Who is this? Is this some stupid experiment Drakken's pulling? I'll…_

_**Kill him?**_

_Well? Is it?_

**_Would Drakken think to have me _habla Espanol**

It was true. The voice in her head was speaking Spanish.

_But that's not possible. I haven't thought in Spanish in years. Not since…_

_**Not since you were me. **_

_I stopped being you for a reason. You're weak. You're pathetic. We survived because of me!_

_**Is that what you tell yourself? We had to leave Team Go, but that's not the same as going Evil, no matter what Hego said! We were a hero, and now we blow up schools and murder teenage girls who have the guts to stand up to us!**_

_She knew the risks – _

**_And you're wrong, Shego. You're either wrong, or you're lying to yourself. You may not have _thought _in Spanish in years…_**

_But I _dreamed _in it last night! That was you! And all the blackouts, telling Drakken to call me Sheila – it was all _you

_**You can't escape me, Shego. You can't escape your real name.**_

"No!" Shego screamed aloud, clamping her hands to her head, trying to rip the voice out of her skull. "_GET OUT OF MY MIND_!"****

And her power exploded outward, turning the door into iron vapor and Gregory Lawson into fine white ash.

**Lifeline**

Ron Stoppable sat at the table he usually shared with Kim Possible at the Middleton Bueno Nacho, and picked listlessly at a basket of nachos.

He hadn't seen Kim for three days. She'd answered his calls, but she'd always answered them with some variation on "Ron, please give me some time. I need to think." Only the first one had been any different, but that was the one that gave him hope. That was when she'd said: "Ron, I love you, but I'm beyond tweaked and into unexplored territory of furious. It's probably best if we don't see each other right now."

So. While it was still entirely possible that he'd fucked up the best and most important thing in his life, at least he knew that she loved him. Or she had three days ago. Maybe she'd asked him to come here this afternoon so she could tell him that she'd changed her mind.

He was prepared to a lot to avoid that. There could be groveling. Begging. Maybe even some weeping. There could be flowers. Not chocolate – after the last six weeks, food was a demanding, obnoxious friend who never knew when to leave the party as far as Kim was concerned. There would definitely be apologies.

He just hoped that, while he was apologizing, she didn't sense that he would do the same thing all over again.

He pushed the thought aside as she slid into the seat across from him. She was dressed much like she had been the last time he'd seen her, right down to the scarf and gloves. She was also wearing heavy – but tasteful – makeup, and her hair was artfully arranged to cover the right side of her face.

It caused him pain to see it, but all he said was "Hey, KP."

"Hey, Ron."

Pause.

"KP, I'm – "

"Ron, I – "

Pause.

Kim held up a hand. "Is it okay if I go first?" She asked.

"Of course it is." He wasn't about to tell her no. Not in this sitch.

"The first day, after I was done hitting things and crying, I talked to my mom. Then I talked to my dad."

Ron winced as visions of black holes danced in his head, but Kim pressed on.

"Then I talked to Wade, Monique…a couple others. And all of them admitted that they wished they could do what you did. In fact, there was only one that was totally on my side. Can you guess who it was?"

"Felix," Ron replied immediately.

"Thaaaat's right. So. Rather than get tweaked at _everybody_ in my life…well, rather than _stay_ tweaked at them…I thought about what they said. A lot."

She slid a gloved hand across the table toward him. He took it with trembling hope.

"Ron, I understand what you're trying to do. I even have an idea why."

_Do you, KP? Can you even really imagine?_

"But I think you should talk to those people, too. Because as much as they want to do what you did, they understand why it's the wrong thing to do. Even my dad."

Ron's face had been brightening, but now he frowned. He tried to sit back, but she gripped his hand tight and wouldn't let him go.

"You need to let me get back on the horse, Ron."

"Kim, even if that's true – and I'm _not_ sure it is – " He shook his finger at her with his free hand. "It's so _hard_. Maybe you can do most of what you used to, but I see how much it tires you out, how much it hurts you. Even though you try to hide it. Why do you have to be so…so brave?"

He expected her to be angry, but instead she smiled. A bit sadly, true, but still a smile, and he never got tired of seeing them. "I'm being brave for _you_, Ron. Just like you used to be brave for me, with all your bruises and cuts and wounds that you didn't want me to know about and didn't let stop you from going on the next mission."

Ron sighed and deflated. "I didn't fool _anybody_, did I?"

Kim shook her head, her smile now fond and exasperated. "No, Ron, you didn't. I just assumed that it was no big, considering how willing you were to whine about anything else."

"Hey!"

She laughed, then her face turned serious again. "Maybe I shouldn't have let you come on those missions, but I did. And you saved the day more than once. Now you need to do the same thing for me – "

"KP, it's – "

"_And_," She overrode him. "Trust that I can't 'be brave' and hide things from x-ray machines and MRI's."

Pause. Sigh. Ron dropped his eyes to the table.

"I guess there's no arguing with that," He admitted.

"Good. Hey," She cupped his chin and raised his head to meet her eyes, and she smiled at him again. "Cheer up. I brought you something." She released his hand and dug around in her bag. After a moment, she pulled out a familiar blue object and held it across the table toward him.

"A Kimmunicator?" He asked, puzzled.

"Uh-uh. A _Ron_nunicator," She said, beaming. "Look."

She tapped the viewscreen. The familiar stylized "KP" had been replaced with a stylized "RS".

For the first time in several days, Ron's face lit up. "That is _so cool_!"

He reached for it, but when he took it, she wouldn't let it go. He gave it a half-hearted tug, then looked at her quizzically.

Her face had gone serious again. "Before I let you have this, you have to release the hostage."

"The hostage?"

"I meant it when I said I wanted the Kimmunicator back."

Ron just looked at her for a long moment. He felt…manipulated. Like he'd been offered a free gift only to find out that you had to buy something that _wasn't_ free to get it. It was a cheat, and he couldn't believe that his best friend was doing it to him.

Almost as if she was reading his mind, she said exactly the right thing. No fair. That was _his_ trick.

"This way, we can stay in touch no matter what. No more worrying or wondering for you – you can call me or beep me whenever you want to reach me."

She didn't mention that she'd be able to do the same for him…or that he couldn't shelter her from missions anymore. She didn't have to.

"This way, we can't be cut off."

Sigh. Grudgingly, he took the Kimmunicator out of his pocket and held it across the table to her. Just as they were about to exchange prisoners, the Kimmunicator started to play the familiar four-note ringtone, and the Ronnunicator started to play "The Naked Mole Rap".

"Hey, that's cool!" Ron exclaimed.

"Thanks," Kim grinned at him.

Then they both activated the communicators in their hands and said "What's the sitch?" Simultaneously.

Normally, Wade might have been flustered by the regular question coming in stereo. Today, it looked like he had other things on his mind. His eyes were wild, and his face had gone pale. "Kim…Ron…there's a hit on your website."

Without another word, he patched it through.

Drakken appeared on both screens. He was powdered with rock dust, and blood ran down the unscarred side of his face from a scalp wound. The picture flickered and distorted with interference.

"Hello, Kimberly," He said. "Ronald." Something boomed in the background, and the picture flickered again. When it returned, dust was filtering down from the ceiling and he was coughing. "It seems that – _hack, hack, hack_ – we've run out of – _hack, hack _– time."


	7. Cauterization

Even in the fastest jet that Global Justice had to offer, the trip to Drakken's lair – a tiny seamount in the Pacific Ring of Fire off the coast of Chile – took hours. Before…well, everything…she would have taken the opportunity to get some sleep. Never know when you might need it, or when you might get another chance. She'd tried, but it just wasn't happening. The seats were reasonably comfortable and so was her battlesuit (if she hadn't been planning to wear it anyway, Ron, Wade, and her family would all have insisted), much moreso than a hospital bed and gown in her opinion. So the problem wasn't physical.

The problem was that this was her first mission since the battle of Middleton High (something she was actively Not Happy with Ron for), and it felt like the first time all over again, she was so keyed-up and anxious.

The problem was that she had no idea what she was going to do when she arrived at Drakken's lair. She couldn't even remember her last fight with Shego, and from what Drakken said, Shego's power had increased and her mental state had deteriorated so much since then that remembering wouldn't help her to plan a strategy. That meant that all she had to go on was…

With a sigh, she took out the Ronnunicator – they never had gotten around to "exchanging hostages" – hit a few buttons, and replayed the conversation with Drakken. Again.

----

Drakken:…latitude.

Kim: Okay, so we've got directions. Now what's the sitch?

Drakken: I beg your pardon?

Kim (Rolls eyes): What can we expect when we get there?

Drakken: Oh. Well…it's bad. The lair has suffered severe structural damage, so you'll have to watch where you step and be on the lookout for cave-ins. The security system is damaged –

Ron: Hey, that sounds like a plus!

Drakken: -and has gone completely haywire. I have no idea what's still working and what isn't, and I have no control over any of it.

Ron: Okay, minus.

Drakken: I agree. The only 'plus' I can think of is that all of the surviving henchmen have fled the island.

Ron: Henchmen? You hired henchmen?

Drakken: Of course I did, Ronald. Think! If you were Shego, wouldn't you wonder what was going on if I didn't at least make _some_ gestures toward getting an operation running?

Ron: I don't know, I'm having some trouble putting myself into the shoes of a TOTAL PSYCHO!

Kim: Wait, wait, wait – you said 'surviving henchmen'?

Drakken: Yes. Shego killed at least one, and some others might have died in the initial blast, or the subsequent –

Kim: Initial - ? Hold on. Let's rewind. Start at the beginning and tell us what happened.

Ron: Yeah, because I seem to remember that it was your job to make sure there _were_ no initial blasts!

Drakken (Glares at Ron): If you want me to start at the beginning, then don't ask me questions about the end!

Ron: Just give us the details on your screw-up, okay?

Drakken: Fine. We'd spent the day "testing" her powers – testing her endurance, finding her maximum output, working on her fine control, finding out if changing the heat-to-kinetic-force ratio affected any of the above…the sort of thing I'd want to know if I was planning to use her as a superweapon.

Kim: But also the sort of thing that's going to use up a lot of her power.

Drakken: Exactly. We'd just quit for the day and she'd gone to her room to shower, but….here, I'll show you.

(Drakken's face disappears from the Kimmunicator and the Ronnunicator, replaced by a black and white picture of several metal doors in a stone hallway.)

Drakken (Voiceover): This is from the security camera in Shego's hallway.

(Shego enters, and begins punching in the combination on the door's keypad. Greg Lawson sneaks up behind her and steals her gloves, setting his death in motion. After he's dead, Shego stands rigid for a few moments, then grabs her head and screams. A blazing light erupts from her, filling the screen for an instant before it goes black)

(Drakken's face reappears)

Drakken: That's when video feed was lost. I assume that the camera was destroyed.

Kim: Safe assumption.

Drakken: I can only guess that the shock of her…confrontation with Mr. Lawson –

Ron: You mean her murdering him?

Drakken: - and the fact that she was already so drained from the testing allowed Sheila to get out.

Ron: Sheila. Hmm. Is that a name we should know?

Drakken: Probably not. The last time I said it to you, you were busy trying to kill me. But do you remember me mentioning that her personality was splitting?

(Ron and Kim make affirmative noises)

Drakken: Well, Sheila is who Shego becomes when her comet-energies drop below a certain point. As far as I can tell, she's everything that Shego hates about herself.

Ron: You mean she's an evil twin? A Ms. Hyde?

Drakken: Let me clarify. She's everything about herself that Shego considers weak and vulnerable.

Ron: Ah. So a _good_ twin, then.

Drakken: Whatever. If I could –

Kim: Wait. If Sheila is the good one or the weak one or whatever, then why is she blowing things up?

Ron: Because blowing up a supervillain's lair is a good thing to do?

Drakken (Ignoring Ron): I don't know. The only clue I have is her reaction just before she…went off. You see, Shego never knows when Sheila is coming out. All she knows is that she has blackouts if she overuses her power.

Kim: I guess she saw her coming, this time.

Drakken: I guess that, too. I'm also guessing that she's using her powers in an instinctive attempt to defend herself, even though the "attacker" is purely mental.

Ron: Dude, the air quotes kinda ruin your delivery.

Drakken: Is this an acting class?

Kim: Boys! Don't make me separate you!

(Apologetic grumbling from Ron and Drakken)

Kim: Now, Drakken: can we salvage _any _of your plan?

Drakken: Quite a bit of it, actually. My original idea was to wait as long as I could so you could recover, then run a particularly grueling battery of tests. You show up when Shego is weak – or better yet, when she's Sheila. If it's Shego, she's caught completely off-guard by the team that's always been able to beat her. If it's Sheila, she takes one look at the girl she killed and probably collapses with guilt. All of that still works, seeing as how she's been discharging energy in one form or another since she killed Lawson. She can't regenerate her power very well when her hands never stop glowing and she blows something up every few minutes, after all.

Kim: So your original plan is still a go, except that Shego is freaking out and we have to dodge falling pieces of lair and malfunctioning death traps.

Drakken: Uh…well, yes. That's pretty much the size of it.

Kim (Sigh): Spankin'.

----

Kim sighed and turned off the Ronnunicator. The deck was stacked as high in their favor as it could be, but the simple fact was that they just didn't have that many cards to stack.

They'd lost contact with Drakken not long after that, and they hadn't been able to re-establish it. That could mean that Shego had damaged his communications equipment, or it could mean that he was dead. Or anything in between. Without him to keep them informed as to the sitch, they didn't know what was waiting for them. If Shego was still freaking and tweaking when they arrived and she didn't sink the island into the ocean with them on it, they had a chance. If she calmed down enough to rest up and recharge even a little, then they were bringing their bare hands to a bazooka fight.

With another sigh, she put away the Ronnunicator and reclined her seat. She was going into battle with the woman who had maimed her, and that woman was far more powerful than she'd been when she'd done the deed. And the best they could hope for was that she'd be tired and mentally off-balance.

Oh, well. It beat waiting for Shego to come to them. And lying awake thinking about it didn't help anything. Time to stop just "trying to sleep" and employ a meditative technique she knew. If she could control her own heartbeat (and she could), then sleep was no problem.

There was no anger, no desire for revenge.

There was no fear, no stomach-churning terror.

There was no desperate, world-protecting need to succeed.

There was only her heartbeat, and her breathing, and…

Sleep.

Where the fear, the anger, and the desperation weren't quite so easy to banish.

Across the cabin, Ron lay with his eyes closed, pretending to sleep and listening to the sounds she made in her dreams.

----

They never did find out for sure if Drakken's island was volcanic (although they assumed it was) or if Shego had simply blown the top off the mountain.

The inside of the lair was as Drakken had described it, largely quieting fears that this might all be a trap. Drakken was a bit too budget-conscious to wreck his own lair this completely for the sake of concealing a trap.

Of course, as he'd warned them, the simple fact that it was wrecked made it dangerous enough.

They were able to lead the lair's single remaining spinning top of doom in front of a laser array that was firing at random intervals, but the explosion brought the room's ceiling down, and they only barely escaped.

The sharks were no longer a danger to anyone, but they'd still had to risk a grappling line into the untrustworthy ceiling to swing across the pool. A live wire had fallen into it.

The trapdoors were opening and closing without any pattern or timing. You might fall through to another part of the lair. Or it might break your leg like a bear trap. Or it might cut you in half.

Then there was the time that a section of wall had simply collapsed. They were rather proud of themselves for that one – _both_ of them had been alert enough to notice it and warn each other with plenty of time to get out of the way.

All the while, they tracked their quarry, not with scents and footprints, but flashing lights and the sounds of explosions and a woman screaming.

----

The battle at Middleton High School had occurred in late June. Kimberly Ann Possible had been gravely injured in that battle, and she had spent the next three weeks in a coma. Following the mad-scientific miracle that had restored her mobility, she'd spent six weeks training as hard as those around her would allow, trying to prepare for this day.

It wasn't enough. Not nearly. Her skills were restored, but her stamina and strength were shadows of their former selves. By the time they reached the labs, she was flagging badly.

That was one of the reasons that it happened. They were nearing their goal (to judge by the noises and the green flashes), and her attention was focused on that, and she had less alertness to go around than she thought. Worse, her reaction time was getting slower and her escapes slimmer with each trap.

So it was that she didn't notice the cage dropping from the ceiling until it was too late for her to do anything but go into a defensive tuck and activate her battlesuit's force shield.

The other reason it happened was because Ron Stoppable heard the faint click of the cage's release, saw it falling, and did nothing.

----

Ron watched Kim slowly pick herself up. He knew what he had to do. He just wasn't sure if he could do it.

Monkey Fist was right. He'd been tapping into the Mystical Monkey Power more and more, lately. Looking back, it was easy to see, but he'd only realized it – and done it on purpose – when he was fighting the hairy freak himself. Could he do it now, and do what he needed to do with it? The Mystical Monkey Power was a warrior's magic, but did that mean that all it was, was a weapon? Not if sensei's abilities were any indication. Maybe, then, they could give him what he needed…to protect.

He reached out his hand.

And he needed as hard as he could.

----

As she climbed to her feet, Kim Possible muttered some words under her breath that her friends and family would probably be surprised that she knew. The battlesuit only carried enough of a charge for one use of the force shield, and she'd just used it. She was sogoing to wish she still had that when she faced Shego.

Oh, well. Spilled milk. No sense crying. She reached back for her laser lipstick –

And her backpack began to move.

She yelped in surprise as the straps writhed and unfastened themselves under her fingers, but she still had the presence of mind to whip around and snatch at it as it pulled itself loose and flew across the cage.

Into Ron Stoppable's outstretched hand.

She stopped in mid-reach, blinking in surprise and confusion.

"Ron?" She asked.

"Yeah, KP?"

"Did you do that?"

He stared at the backpack in his hands like he'd not only never seen one in his life, but had no idea what such a thing could be. "I…I guess I did."

"How?"

Ron's face slowly lit up. "The Force is strong with this one, Kim. Wow, it worked! It really worked!"

Kim realized what he must be talking about, and her temper flared. "You used the Mystic Monkey Power to steal my backpack? At a time like _this_? Are you out of your _mind_?"

She started forward, reaching for the backpack again, but he leaped back, pulling it out of her reach, and the smile vanishing from his face.

She stopped, but still held her hand out. "Ron, quit playing around," she said sternly. "Give it to me!"

He paused, looked at the backpack, looked at her, took a deep breath.

And tossed it across the room.

Her hand dropped to her side, and she stared at him in wide-eyed, wide-mouthed shock.

"Ron?"

He started toward her, then stopped. He raised his hands as if he wanted to hug her, or grab the cage bars. But he stopped, and let them drop.

"I love you, KP," he said without preamble. "And I hope you can forgive me someday."

As he started to back away, Kim's shock broke as she realized what he was doing. She flung herself against the bars of her cage and reached for him, beseeching, hopelessly, trying to get him to come back.

"Ron, wait!"

"I know that cage isn't exactly 'safe', but it's saf_er_ than where we were going."

"Ron, you don't have to do this!"

He shook his head, more like he was trying to banish an unwanted thought than like he was disagreeing with her. "Yes, I do, KP. This way, forgive me or not, at least you'll be okay."

With that, he turned and ran on, toward Shego's flares and shouts.

Kim immediately started casting about for some way out of the trap. It didn't even have a door or a lock she could pick. The only way a prisoner could be released would be for the cage to be raised back up off the floor.

That didn't matter. She had to get out somehow. Something was very, very wrong.

There'd been something in Ron's eyes that she'd never seen there before.

Monkey Fist and Duff Killigan would have recognized it.

----

Ron Stoppable had seen some damaged rooms as he and Kim had searched the lair for Shego. He wasn't sure if the villainess had wandered through all of them personally during her little running battle with herself, or if the damage she was doing to the mountain itself was enough.

None of those rooms, however, had been as completely demolished as the lair's great central chamber. Not a stick or strut of furniture remained whole. Girders sagged and leaned, slowly losing the battle to support a creaking, crumbling roof as cables – some live, some too damaged to be live anymore – hung from them. The few remaining lights flickered and strobed. Unrecognizable scraps of metal that had probably been sophisticated weapons or scientific equipment a few hours ago were scattered all over the floor and embedded in the walls. Those walls themselves – the natural stone of the mountain – had gaping holes in them, and even places where it seemed they'd melted and run.

Standing in the middle of this devastation was Shego, but she wasn't shouting or exploding anymore. In fact, all she was doing was panting as if she'd just run a marathon while the last sparks of green fire flickered out in her hair and the green glow faded from her eyes. If she really had been trying to use her physical powers against her mental opponent, it seemed that fight was over.

Her hands were still lit up, though.

As the last of the (non-hand) green light faded, Shego seemed to become more aware of her surroundings. Ron hadn't been standing in the doorway for more than a moment or two before she turned to him with her trademark sneer on her face. "Oh, look," she said in a voice that was dripping with contempt. "It's the _pendejo_."

She blinked at that and lost her sneer for a second, shaking her head like a horse trying to shake off flies. But a second later, the sneer was back. "So what's the sitch?" She mocked. "You here to avenge your fallen princess like some bright shining knight? Carrying your lady's token on you somewhere? Is it a lock of her hair? Or maybe a little bit of her ashes? Or is it a pair of her panties that you sniff on those long, cold, lonely nights when you miss her especially bad? I'll admit, it doesn't matter much to me," She raised her flaming hands up into a fighting stance. "But I'll give you your props: it's a classy way to commit suicide."

It surprised her that he didn't respond to her taunts. What surprised her even more was the sheer glacial coldness in his eyes. She'd expected him to be weeping and swinging wildly by now.

"You know," He said with that same icy calm. "I've had this same conversation with Duff Killigan and Monkey Fist. About how you 'super villains' just take and take, and never give a damn about the people you're taking from. My solution for both of them was to take something away from them, just to show them what it felt like. And it seems to have worked. But you're a special case. You did something much, much worse. You took Kim away from me."

And she had. For three weeks, Kim had been gone, and the fact that she'd been able to come back from where Shego had sent her bought Shego nothing. She'd _murdered_ Kim, First Degree, murdered _and_ – when Kim had come back and found herself broken in a hospital bed – tortured, and the fact that Kim had overcome it all was just another case of Kim's heroism overcoming Shego's evil.

It. Bought. Shego. _Nothing._

"Sure did," Shego taunted. "Gonna do anything about it today? Or are you just gonna sob on my shoulder?"

Ron ignored her. "Kim is my world. She's my life. She's _everything_ to me, and she has been since we were both four. And you took her away from me. So now, I'm going to do what somebody should have done long ago, and take everything away from _you_."

Shego rolled her eyes and raised her flaming hands, reminding him what he had to deal with. "You can't be serious."

"Don't believe the serious words?" Ron said. "Fine. Then – "

"Note."

His right hand flared with golden light. It was the color of –

"Serious."

Left hand. The color of…

"Face."

His eyes. The color of mystic light blazing through his once-gentle brown eyes.

The contempt finally fell from Shego's face. "Hey, that's new, when did – "

Without warning, she fired off a plasma bolt. Ron crossed his arms in front of his face in a glowing-armed block. The bolt hit and the mountain shook, bringing more dust and pebbles down from the ceiling.

Ron Stoppable slid back a few inches. Then he lowered his arms and grinned at the stunned villainess, fangs glinting where his canines had been.

"My turn," he said. Then he charged.

----

If anyone had been there to see, the first few moments would have been spectacular: the Golden Boy and the Green Woman clashing, light slamming into light, flashes and sparks and shockwaves shaking the mountain.

She was the better fighter by far, but the match was balanced by his enhanced speed and strength.

Block. Feint. Dodge. Block. Punch. Kick. Leap. A flaming, seismic dance.

Then, after those first few moments, the balance tipped.

If they'd both been fresh, the advantage would have been hers. But her power had been bled out by hours of fighting with herself, while his was in full flood. He'd gone beyond faster than she'd ever seen him to faster than human, and his muscles surged with power each time he swung. And the golden glow blazed ever higher.

Shego found herself backing away, trying to dodge or parry his piledriver blows, not daring to simply block them anymore. But he kept coming, relentless, a slight-framed blond juggernaut. As she grew more desperate, she grew more aggressive, and Ron found himself wading into an angry-cat flurry of attacks, but even that barely slowed him. A kick to the ribs brought a mere grunt, and he didn't even notice it when her claws scored his shoulder.

Then it happened.

A flaming fist shot in toward his face. Instead of simply dodging or blocking, he spun out of the way, caught her arm, twisted it, and brought his elbow down on it. Hard.

Matchstick. Snap.

She screamed.

It was a beautiful sound, but Ron didn't stop to savor it. Instead, he began punching her now-exposed side, battering ribs and kidneys. A normal opponent would have been largely finished at that point, but Shego was able to use her other hand to fire a plasma bolt over her shoulder, forcing him to duck and let go. The Mystic Monkey Power might be making him tougher than usual, but he still wasn't eager to stand still for a fireball to the face.

She whirled and backed away from him, her uninjured arm held up defensively, the other hanging uselessly. Her face was tight with pain and paler than usual, but still set in a fighter's snarl.

Ron just looked at her. "Do you think you can survive something like what you did to Kim?" He asked casually. "I don't think you can, but I'm going to find out. Of course, I can't fire artillery out of my hands, not even hopped up on Mystic Monkey Power, so I'm going to have to work much slower – "

Just then, she fired off a burst of said artillery, forcing him to duck.

"_Comemierda!_" She spat. Then her eyes went wide and her fire went out. "No…" She gasped. Then her eyes shut tight and she clutched her head with her uninjured hand. "Shut up!" She screamed.

"Oh, I'm done talking," Ron said, stepping forward and lashing out with a kick that shattered her left knee.

Her eyes flew open and she screamed again, but she didn't fall. Instead, she hopped back a few steps on her working leg, and raised her working arm, lighting up for another blast.

He simply ducked beneath it and swept her remaining leg.

Shego hit the ground hard, but she managed to catch herself with her good arm, sort of. Only a grunt. Disappointing, but one can't have everything.

Ron spun up into a guard position. Shego on the floor, with only one arm and one leg, was still dangerous.

But instead of trying to attack him or defend herself, Shego just started to crawl away, muttering angrily to herself. It was like she'd forgotten he was there.

Oh, well. Gift horse. Mouth. Not looking.

Instead, Ron Stoppable stepped up and started kicking.

Except for scrupulously avoiding her head, he didn't take any particular aim. Hip. Leg. Shoulder. Ribs. As long as it got a sound out of her – grunt, squeal, or crunch – it was all good.

Whatever internal argument Shego was having, she either ended it or suspended it as she fell silent and started to make a more concerted effort to get away. Can't have that. Unfortunately for her, her efforts raised her up off the ground just a little bit, just enough to –

Ron Stoppable took a few steps back, then ran forward to deliver a kick that would have made a professional placekicker proud into Shego's exposed stomach. Normally, Shego would have seen it coming and rolled out of the way, or at least tightened her stomach muscles. Maybe it even would have helped.

This time, she opened her mouth to scream and lost her last several meals onto the chamber floor.

Ron had a moment's savage satisfaction at that, but then something occurred to him, and suddenly it wasn't enough. The satisfaction evaporated.

He stepped forward, grabbed Shego by the hair, and shoved her face into the puddle of puke, like rubbing a puppy's nose into a mess it's made.

"After you put Kim in the hospital," he snarled. "Some asshole got in and took a picture of her in her bed, all stuck full of tubes, a bag of her own piss hanging down beside the bed. Her own piss!" He shoved harder. "Kim! Who used to be so afraid of a bad yearbook photo!" Harder. "Can you imagine the humiliation? I bet you can now!" He shoved harder, his voice rising to a scream. "How does it feel, huh? Do you like it?"

Harder.

With a scream of panic and pain, Shego lashed out with a flaming claw, forcing him to leap back and let go.

Lashed out with her _broken _arm.

Ron stumbled back a few more steps, and Shego took advantage of the opening to make another escape attempt.

Up on all fours this time.

She was healing. Her powers were healing her.

Ron's mind filled up with red and black hellfire flames. "No," he said, his voice deep and thick with hate. He stepped forward and kicked her in the ass, knocking her flat on her belly again. "You don't get away."

She apparently didn't hear him, because she started to get up again. That was when he drove his heel into her lower back.

There was a crunch of bone, a shriek of branding-iron agony that made the room ring, and Shego's legs collapsed.

It wasn't enough. There was no satisfaction, not even savage, not even for an instant. The hellfire in his mind burned it away.

He kicked her over onto her back, then dropped down on top of her, his knees pinning her arms.

"It's not right," He snarled, punching her in the face.

"Kim suffered so much-"

Punch.

"Mr. Dr. P, Mrs. Dr. P, the tweebs, Wade – _everybody_ suffered _so much_ – "

Punch.

"Monique is _still _fucked up she thinks she's a _coward_ – "

Punch.

"Kim is scarred she'll always be scarred – "

Punch

"And it's all because of _you-"_

_Punch._

"And it's not fair – "

_Punch._

"That you're – "

_Punch!_

" – Getting – "

_**Punch!**_

"_Better!_"

_**PUNCH!**_

Maybe it wasn't fair, and maybe it wasn't right, but it was what was happening, however much he swung and screamed. As he watched, her broken nose returned to its former shape. A shattered jaw set itself, a crushed cheekbone filled out while the swelling of a blackened eye went down.

No.

He drew his arm back, and he felt the Mystic Monkey Power flowing down it, into his fist, golden light blazing to sun-white heat. So much power…no wonder Monkey Fist craved it…and it was almost like the Mystic Monkey Power itself hated Shego as much as he did.

Good. Not that it mattered. All that mattered was that the next time he swung, all that would be left of Shego's head would be spaghetti sauce. The lumpy kind.

"Regenerate _that_," he growled.

He drew his fist back a little further…then stopped.

No. That was too good for her. It was a warrior's death. He didn't need his power to kill Shego. He didn't _want_ his power to kill her. All he needed was his own two hands.

He shifted his seating a little. It freed Shego's arms, but it let him get his weight into it properly.

Then he wrapped his own two hands around Shego's throat.

"Still need air, bitch?"

Apparently she did. After a moment, she came awake – a little. Badical. He wanted her to know that she was dying. Her hands scrabbled and grasped at his arms, weakly, uselessly. Why didn't she light them up?

Maybe all of her energy was being devoted to healing. No big.

Her eyes fluttered open and looked up into his face. Even better. He wanted to stare into those brown eyes and know that she was seeing death coming.

Her mouth worked as she tried to gasp and her tongue started to protrude.

Yes. Just a little more.

Wait. Someone was coming. Someone was in the room with them. He sensed them with the Mystic Monkey Power, then heard their footsteps.

The henchmen were all dead or gone. That left Drakken. Ron wanted to ignore the blue freak, finish the job, but who knew what he'd do if Ron left his back turned to him. Best get rid of him quickly, then get back to business.

A tiny hand grabbed Ron's shoulder.

He exploded to his feet, whipping about in a hard backhand.

That sent Kim Possible spinning to the floor.

----

Ron Stoppable's world ended.

For an endless moment, all he could do was stand and stare as –

Everything. Everything he'd done. Every reason he'd done it for. All of it had been ruined. No, not just ruined, not even destroyed, but wiped away, annihilated, completely erased by –

- stare as Kim Possible rolled over to face him, a mark the size and shape of his own fist already turning black on her unscarred cheek.

There was shock in her eyes, disbelief, but – oh, thank God, thank God – no fear. If there had been fear in KP's eyes, fear of _him_, then Ron Stoppable's world truly _would_ have ended.

He dropped to his knees beside her, wanting to reach out and touch, grab, hug, not daring to.

"Oh, God, KP, I'm sorry! Are you alright? I thought you were Drakken, what with the not seeing you and the little hands and I'm _so_ sorry you have to believe me I would never hurt you not on purpose – "

"Ron. Stop."

"Are you all right? Please tell me you're all right, oh, God – "

"Stop!"

"Please, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm – "

"Ron!" Her hands shot out, grabbed him by the shoulders, and shook him. "Stop! Stop apologizing and listen to me! I'm _glad_ that it happened! Glad!"

He stared at her blankly, dazed. "Glad?"

"Yes! Glad! It woke you up! And now that you're awake, you're going to do what you haven't done since _I_ woke up! You're going to listen to me!"

She paused for a moment, to make sure that he really was listening. He really was. Ron Stoppable's universe consisted of nothing but Kimberly Ann Possible at that moment.

When she spoke again, it was just above a whisper. But her quiet, intense words had the same effect on him as if she'd returned his punch:

"Ron, I don't know what you've been doing this summer, but you've come a long way since I got hurt. A long way. Me, I wasn't even close to 100 percent when we started on this mission, and I'm exhausted now. If we fight, you'll really hurt me – but we're going to fight if you're going to kill Shego."

She paused to let that sink in. Like a punch to the gut. As his eyes and mouth widened, she went on. "Killing somebody in a fight, because there's no other way to stop them or save someone else? That could happen someday. I hate the thought, but I think it every time Drakken's stuff starts to blow up or the only way to get past Shego in time to _stop_ it from blowing up is to knock something heavy on top of her. But to just kill someone? Cold blood? Judge, jury, and executioner? Especially like _this_? If that happens, then the Ron I love will be dead, and I refuse to lose you."

Ron just blinked. You'll hurt me, I'll fight you, I love you, I refuse to lose you. It was too much. Circuit breakers tripped in his brain, and he had no response.

Kim got up to her knees and dragged him into a fierce hug. "Do you hear me?" She whispered. "I'm not going to lose you. I'm not."

Ron shuddered and collapsed into her arms with a sigh. "How?" He asked.

"Rufus," she answered, still not letting him go. "We were both beyond tweaked, but when we saw what you were doing, we were too scared to stay that way."

"Uh-huh, uh-huh." Ron felt a tap at his knee and looked down to where Rufus stood, looking up at him with worried eyes.

Ron took a deep breath. "Well, I'm – "

"No."

All three of them whipped around.

Behind them, Shego was getting up.

They leaped to their feet and backed away, but she crawled after them, reaching out to them.

"_No, por favor. Por favor, dejalo. Deja que termine. Por favor."_

"Ron?" Kim asked. "What is that she's saying? Is that Spanish?" She glanced at him, then glanced again, then froze. Ron's face had gone hard and cold again.

"Ron, no!" She slapped a hand across his chest just as he started forward. Rufus ran up and began pushing against his ankle.

"_Por favor, es lo mejor para todos. Por favor, por favor, por favor…"_

Ron started forward again.

"No!" Kim placed herself squarely in front of him, planting her hands on his chest.

Receiving no answer to…whatever she was saying…Shego lurched to her feet and staggered away.

"KP, you don't understand! She's not begging for mercy, she's – "

"I don't care! It's not about her!"

"Unh-uh, unh-uh!"

Shego fled through one of the chamber's blasted-away doors, her stagger reduced to a slight limp.

"KP! She's getting away!"

"No, she's not! I'm going after her! And if you can control yourself, you can come with! Do you understand?"

Ron looked away from the doorway that Shego had fled through and met her eyes. Hard. Cold. Instead of being warm with Ronshine, his eyes had frozen solid.

"Do. You. Understand?"

Ron nodded. Once.

It was the best she was going to get. With one last, wary look, she turned and ran down the hall that Shego had taken.

----

Kim was right about one thing. Shego wasn't getting away. She wasn't trying to. And besides, she wasn't Shego right now.

Sheila staggered only a little way down the hall before dropping to her knees.

Kim Possible. She'd seen Kim Possible. But that wasn't…well, possible. She had to be a hallucination, a shadow of her own guilt. Or maybe she really _was_ a ghost – why would a hallucination have the scars of her murder?

Kim's boyfriend could probably tell her. He probably knew. He had screamed at her – at Shego – when he was killing her, but the only word she'd been able to understand was Kim's name. The rest had been _en Ingles_. He'd probably been telling her wonderful things about Kim, giving her details about the person she'd murdered.

But then, just before the end, he'd stopped short. Stopped short of doing justice, stopped short of saving the world from her evil, stopped short of ending her guilt.

Stopped short, and left it up to her. To finish it herself.

She looked down at her hands – her murderer's hands – and called up Shego's fire. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, Shego roared and screamed in outrage, but Sheila ignored her. Their hours-long battle, and the battle with Stoppable, had made this moment possible. The power had been drained with blasting and healing. All that was left was draining into the fire in her hands. Her flesh was vulnerable in a way that it hadn't been since the comet struck. It would have taken days for her energy to rise to even Shego's normal levels, but Sheila didn't plan on living beyond the next minute or two.

Shego's fire would burn through her eyes…she would inhale it through her nose and mouth…up through the moist linings into her sinuses…and it would boil her brain in her skull.

And the world would be safe from her.

But she didn't try to fool herself, any more than she would fool _Jesucristo_. It would still be suicide. Protecting the world from the green-black hellfire that was burning and building inside her was just a side effect of the fact that she hated what she'd become. She would still be damned. But then, she was damned anyway.

She took a deep breath and began one last prayer. Not to _Jesucristo_, but to the one person who might forgive.

"_Dios te salve María llena eres de Gracia, el Señor es contigo. Bendita eres entre todas las mujeres y bendito es el fruto de tu vientre…"_

----

Kim and Ron rounded the corner at top speed, only to stop short and stare at the sight before them.

"What is she _doing_?" Kim asked.

"She's – I mean, I think she's _praying_," Ron answered.

"But why would she be – oh, God," Kim started forward, but Ron grabbed her shoulder.

"Wait, KP, this is perfect!"

Kim turned and stared at him in disbelief. "Perfect? How is this perfect?"

"All we have to do is nothing, and the problem sorts itself out!"

The disbelief turned to dawning horror. "The problem's name is Shego, and I promised that I wouldn't hurt her or let her get hurt if I could help it."

"You made that promise when you were paralyzed in a hospital bed and Drakken was waving those nanites in front of you! It was blackmail! You don't have to – "

"You don't understand," she interrupted. "I didn't promise to save Shego so I could get the nanites. I agreed to the nanites so I could save Shego."

Now it was Ron's turn to stare in disbelief.

"…_ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte. Amén."_

Kim only recognized the last word. But that was enough to know that it was the last word.

"No!"

Kim leaped, catching Shego's wrists and sending them both tumbling.

Ron started forward, but found he couldn't go more than a step or two. He couldn't do this. He couldn't break KP's trust again, but he couldn't help Shego either. Couldn't. He turned away, in spite of Rufus's tugging.

Both women instinctively tried to come to their feet after the roll, but Kim refused to release the other woman's wrists, and the furthest they could get locked together so was their knees.

Shego started to pull away, then froze when she saw who had tackled her, her dark eyes widening.

"_Eres tu. De verdad, eres tu. Eres un espiritu, has vuelto para castigarme?"_

"Shego, just turn the fire off, and let's talk about this."

"_Perdona me. Creame, por favor…estoy…pero mira! Aqui esta tu justicia."_

Shego tried to bring her hands to her face again, but Kim jerked them away.

"Ron, I don't think she can understand me! Drakken forgot to mention that 'Sheila' only speaks Spanish!"

"_Que mas quieres de mi?"_ Sheila pleaded. _"!Deja que lo haga y tendras tu vengancia!"_

Unable to raise her hands to her face, Shego tried to lower her face into them, but Kim jerked them away. Then she twined her forearms around the other woman's and threaded her fingers into the flaming claws. Shego's arms were pinned against Kim's armor and she was blocked from her fire.

"_Por favor!"_

"I can't understand her either, Ron – I took French!" She glanced at Ron, and her blood ran cold. He was pacing like a lion in a cage with bratty boys poking sticks at him. Shaking his head, stepping toward them, then stepping back. Rufus tugged uselessly at his pants cuff.

"_Por favor! Perdona me! Solo dejame hacerlo!"_

"Ron, you have to help! My hands are burning!"

Ron started forward, a murderous snarl on his face, then stopped, shaking his head again, still the animal tormented to the edge of madness.

"_Es lo mejor para todos! Soy una monstrocidad!"_

"Ron, you have to make her understand!"

"Me?" Ron asked, his voice thick and rough.

"_Soy brujah! Soy una diabla!"_

"Yes, you!" Kim said, her voice cracking like a whip. "You learned how to speak Bug from spending a day and a half with Roachie, but you didn't learn Spanish from Zita? I don't think so!"

Shego's hands blazed higher, and Kim cried out in pain.

Ron took another step forward, then stopped again.

"_Soy mala! El mundo sera mejor sin migo!"_

Kim could feel her armor heating up, the skin on her hands reddening. The green-and-black flames were too close to her face. This was going to kill all three of them.

Then she knew what she had to do. She didn't know how she knew, but she did. She just hoped Ron could forgive her for doing it.

"Ron!" She called. "Ron, help! KP in trouble!"

Ron's paralysis broke. He leaped forward, his hands glowing gold –

And laid them on Kim and Shego's clenched hands, dousing the green fire.

Shego's night-colored, tear-filling eyes looked up into his. Something strange had happened to her face. It was like all the green was draining down into her hands, into the fire, revealing another color beneath. A darker color.

"_Por favor." _She begged._ "Yo humeresco morir."_

"_Oh, yo estoy en acuerdo contigo," _he said. _"Completamente. Pero yo soy solo un hombre. Esta muchacha aqui…" _He nodded down at Kim, who was still looking at Shego with a desperate hope in her eyes. _"Ella no es hombre, ni espiritu. Ella es un angel, y angeles quieren salvar a todos."_

Shego's fire went out. Whether by her choice or because she finally ran out of energy, neither teen knew. And then, the woman thatKim Possiblehated the most in all the world collapsed, sobbing, into her arms.

With no clue what else to do, Kim began patting her back and stroking her hair. "Drakken?" She called. "If you can hear me, I'll spare you that beating if you come out here and do something about this right now!"

Warily, Drakken limped out of the shadows, the blood from his scalp wound drying on his cheek. When he saw that neither the teens nor Shego intended to attack him, he simply walked up and injected something into Shego's shoulder. A moment later, she went limp.

"Thank you," he said as he knelt to gather Shego up. "You can call Global Justice now."

"They're waiting outside," Kim said quietly. "How did you think we got here?"

"If I knew how you got around," He said as he stood up – had Shego always been so small and light? – "Would I always be so surprised when you show up?"

"Well, that's how we did this time. They're waiting at the front door," She pointed.

With a nod and another "thank you," Drakken walked off toward his imprisonment.

Ron started after him, but Kim caught his hand. "Ron – "

"Yes?" His voice was harsh and strained. She didn't quite dare look up into his face. It might be, too.

"What was she saying?"

"She was begging you to let her die. Talking about how evil she was, how much she deserved it, that kinda thing. She thought you were a ghost, come back for your revenge."

"And what did you tell her?"

"I agreed. But I told her that I agreed because I was just a man. But you're not a man, and you're not a ghost. You're an angel, and angels want to save everyone."

"Oh."

Kim wanted to tell him how little she felt like an angel at that moment. How she was sorry for making him do something so very hard, for making him help someone he hated so much. She wanted to tell him that it hadn't been easy for her, either. She'd woken up in a hospital bed paralyzed and scarred because of Shego – how could she do anything but hate her? But to do anything else – to kill her or let her die, no matter _how_ they felt about her, would destroy them. There was only one thing that she knew more deeply and truly than she knew that, and that was that she loved him.

But in the end, she was too exhausted and heart-sore to say anything, and she let him walk away.

**Author's Note: I hope the changed rating didn't put anybody off. However, there are things other than sex that demand an "M" rating, and I think Ron's brutality in this chapter definitely fits that bill. ****Honestly, the depth of the boy's rage surprised and frightened even me.**


	8. Healing

It had been three days since Shego had been defeated and captured. And it had been that long since Kim Possible had spoken to Ron Stoppable. It wasn't for lack of trying on her part; Ron had turned off the Kimmunicator, and he wasn't answering calls from either her or Wade. Considering how they'd parted, she hadn't quite dared simply come over, but the time had come.

The last thing she'd said to him had been "oh." Not good enough.

No one had answered the front door, despite her knocking and bell-ringing. Ron's parents weren't home – of course they weren't; it was the middle of the day and bank officers and actuaries didn't get summer vacation – but thanks to Wade, Kim knew that Ron was. So now she was coming up the front stairs, despite her well-mannered instincts, approaching a door that she'd never been nervous to approach before.

Now she was, and she hated it. Her stomach was in knots, and that was wrong. Ron had always been the one person in the world that she could be completely relaxed and comfortable – completely _herself_ – around.

But now – stomach knots? Wrong. Sick and wrong. No, worse – wrongsick.

And that was why this had gone on long enough. She couldn't leave things as they were any longer. Nervous or not, it was time to at least try to set things right. She took a deep breath and knocked.

"Ron?"

No answer.

She tried again. "Hey, Ron," She called, trying to sound cheerful. "You decent?"

Still no answer.

"Ron, please. We need to talk."

Nothing.

Okay, that was enough. "Ron, I know you're in there, and I'm not leaving. I'm only knocking to give you a chance to stop whatever it is you're doing in there and put some pants on."

There. He could tell her to go away if he wanted, but he couldn't just ignore her and hope she'd go away.

There was an unhappy grunt from inside the room, but then the door swung open. "Ron, I – "

No one was there. Not at Ron's eye-level, anyway. She looked down.

Standing in the doorway, looking up at her, was a worried-looking Rufus. She knelt and scooped him up into her cupped hands, leaning in to whisper confidentially.

"Is it that bad?" She asked.

He nodded. "Uh-huh, uh-huh."

"Okay. Why don't you give us some time, and I'll see what I can do."

Rufus nodded again, hopped out of her hands, and scampered out the door. She stood up and closed it behind him, then turned to face Ron.

He lay on his bed in a pair of shorts, staring determinedly at the ceiling,very deliberately Not Looking At Her. It wasn't something she was used to, and despite her bold words outside the door and to Rufus, she had no idea how to deal with it.

_He must hate me._

She would go home and cry her eyes out later, when that was confirmed. Right now, she had to try _something_.

"I, uh, came to, uh…you know, we never did exchange the hostages."

He made a noise that she chose to interpret as asking her what she was talking about.

"You know," she said, digging into her backpack. "You've still got the Kimmunicator, and I've still got – " She held up the Ronnunicator and hit the button to make it play "The Naked Mole Rap".

Without looking away from the ceiling, he pointed at his desk, where the Kimmunicator sat, its battery removed and set beside it.

With a sigh, Kim crossed to the desk, put down the Ronnunicator, and stuffed the Kimmunicator and its battery into her backpack.

Well. That was one icebreaker that hit a 'berg and sank. Time to be a bit more direct. She crossed the room again and sat down beside him on the bed. He flinched away from her. He might as well have hit her again, but she held on.

"Ron, I meant what I said. We do need to talk. I'm worried about you. Wade is worried about you. Even _Rufus_ is worried about you."

He looked away from the ceiling…but he also looked away from her.

"Look, I know you're mad at me, but – "

He finally turned to look at her, his eyes wide with what looked like…disbelief?

"Mad at you?" He asked. "You think I'm mad at you?"

"Well…yeah. I made you help me help Shego, and now you won't talk to me. What am I supposed to think?"

He sat up, staring at her wildly. As he did so, Kim realized that he wasn't staring at her eyes, as he usually did, or her hair, as he often did, or even her breasts, as he sometimes did. He was staring at her cheek. Where the mark he'd left was only now starting to turn yellow and purple instead of the near-black it had been.

She knew what he was going to say an instant before he said it.

"You think I'm – Kim, I _hit_ you!"

She'd known it was coming, but she still didn't know quite how to deal with it. It was too sudden, too opposite from what she'd expected. _Ron's not furious with me? Ron's this upset over something I'd pretty much written off as just another accidental, Ron-related mission-bruise?_

System overload. Reboot.

She blinked. Paused. Blinked again.

The silence was stretching out and Ron wasn't looking at her anymore. At least now she knew why. It wasn't because he didn't want to see her face, it was because he was unable to face her. Not much better, but maybe easier to fix. Not that she had the slightest idea how she could so, but she had to start trying. "But…Ron, that's no big…"

"Wrong, KP," He interrupted. "There's nothing bigger. No decent man does that. _Ever_. I may not have learned much from my Dad, but he taught me that."

"And as a general rule, he's right," She agreed. "But we've been sparring for weeks."

He shook his head, still not looking toward her. "That's different, KP. This is _real_. I hit you and I hurt you for _real_."

Enough of that. No more wallowing – time to remind him that she wasn't a victim, and he wasn't a villain. "I've hit _you_ before, for real. And hurt _you_ for real. Picked you up and threw you into a concession stand, if I remember."

"I think it might've been a hotdog cart. Besides – "

"I'm a girl? I'm the one who knows fourteen forms of Kung Fu, Ron, so unless you're all charged up on Mystical Monkey Power, I'm the one who has the most tools to use for abusive."

"It's pretty much gone again right now, but that's not the point. What I was going to say was that you were moodulated."

Perfect. Walked right into it. "Exactly," she agreed. She reached out and gently turned his face to her. "It's the same thing, Ron." He tried to shake his head, but she wouldn't let him. "Ah! What you did wasn't on purpose, either. It's not like you saw me, got mad that I was taking Shego's side against yours, and _then_ hit me – although, under the circumstances, I'd have forgiven even that." Her face hardened for an instant – "Once." – and then softened again. "You thought I was Drakken joining the fight. It was an _accident_. You'd never hurt me on purpose."

"Are you sure, KP? I let you get trapped in that cage, and that wasn't an accident."

She hesitated. That was true. And she _was_ tweaked about that. Later, they'd need to have a long talk about that. A very important and very hard talk, about letting her live her own life even if he wanted to protect her; about supporting without smothering; about not taking her choices away because he thought she was making the wrong ones. She didn't think it would take more than one such talk – supporting, protecting, and nurturing were in his nature, not smothering or controlling. He never would have made such a stumble if he hadn't been so badly hurt.

But that wasn't the talk that they were having right now, and now wasn't a time for nuance.

She let go of his face, reached down and took a hand out of his lap, and raised it to her throat. He tried to pull the hand away, but she held it in place. She knew what image his hand at a woman's throat was probably bringing to his mind, and she wanted him to understand that she felt perfectly safe giving him the power to do that to her.

"I'm sure," she said. "You were trying to protect me. You would never hurt me on purpose, Ron – _I trust you_."

She pressed his hand one last time. Then let him go.

He withdrew his hand slowly, staring at her in wonder and disbelief. Then he looked away. "Maybe you're right," he said. "Maybe I wouldn't. But I seem to keep hurting you just by being around."

Alarms went off in her mind as a lot of things suddenly fell into place. "This…this isn't just about that hit, is it? Or anything that happened in that lair."

He didn't answer. And he didn't look at her. That was answer enough.

"Oh, Ron, I thought you already had this conversation with my parents."

"What conversation?"

He knew damn well which. "The one where they told you that what happened to me _wasn't your fault_?"

Even though he still didn't turn to face her, she could see him getting ready to tell her a lie, to say anything to end this torturous, dangerous conversation quickly. Then he sighed, and his shoulders drooped.

"They told me that they didn't blame me," he said. "It's not the same thing."

_Oh, Ron…oh, my poor Ron…what have you done to yourself? What have you been doing to yourself all this time?_

"I thought they _also _told you not to punish yourself."

He turned back toward her, his face indignant. "And I haven't been!" He protested.

"Ron…that's _exactly _what you've been doing."

"No, I haven't! I've been trying to make up for it, make sure it never happens again! There's a difference!"

"Not if you're destroying yourself in the process!"

They stayed that way for a moment, green eyes locked to brown…and then he looked away again.

"You're right," he said. "And it was all for nothing in the end. Not only did I fail to protect you – like I _always_ fail at _everything _– but I actually _hurt _you."

"Ron – "

He waved her off. "You should go, Kim. You really should. I'm five hundred miles of bad road."

Kim stared at his back for a long moment, stunned. Then she started to get mad. "No," she said. "I'm not going anywhere. There's two things I need to tell you first, and you're going to listen: number one: if you think that stopping Shego from burning my face off – and doing it the way I wanted you to, by saving her, too, even though you hate her – counts as failing to save me, then you're crazier than she is. Number two: what I did this spring? That wasn't noble. That wasn't self-sacrificing. That was totally selfish. I didn't do that for you – I did it for me, and I'm sorry that it's hurt you so much. You've always been there for me, and I knew that I couldn't live in a world without you. So you better believe me when I tell you _again_ that I'm _not_ going to lose you."

There. She said it. She waited. And waited. No answer.

----

Ron didn't turn to look at her. If he did, he might start crying, and he couldn't do that. Wanted to. Couldn't. You don't get to cry if it's your fault. He might hug her, and that would be even worse. He might agree to let her stay, and that would be worst of all. If she stayed, he could only hurt her more.

Bad road. Bad road.

He heard a sigh behind him. Kim standing up, taking a few steps away from the bed. Was she leaving? Good. Go, just go. I can't hold out much longer.

"Ron, are you a virgin?"

_Huh?_ He blinked.

"Uh, yeah," He answered before he could think not to. "Why – "

"Good. So am I. And I've been on the Pill since I was fourteen. There. We've talked about it."

There was a light _fluff_ as a piece of cloth hit the carpet.

Ron spun, his eyes wide with shock.

Kim was standing a few feet away, with her shirt on the floor at her feet and her fingers working her belt buckle.

For a moment, Ron was too stunned to react or even think. He just let information flow through his eyes and into his brain.

Kim was wearing a bra. Of course she was wearing a bra. A navy-blue one with a silver floral pattern. He'd seen her wear swimsuits that covered less, but that was different. Swimsuit was clothing, bra was underwear. Small or not, wearing a swimsuit meant that she was fully clothed. If the bra was exposed, then she was getting undressed. He'd seen her in a bra before, more times than he could count, but that was different. When you're changing clothes in the back of a cargo plane, you forget about modesty pretty quickly. He'd heard similar things happened among actors who had to make quick costume changes. He'd seen her _without _a bra before. Seen and touched, and it had been wonderful. But somehow, he could already tell that this was different.

"Kim," he said weakly. "What are you doing?"

"I'd've thought that was obvious," she said, unbuttoning and unzipping her jeans. "You won't forgive yourself, so you need somebody to do it for you." She kicked off her shoes. "Fine. _I _forgive you. Not that I, or anybody else, ever thought that you were anything less than a hero." She hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her jeans and pushed them down. Ron's mind, still stuck on "receive", noticed that her panties were plain, light-blue cotton that didn't match her satiny bra. She hadn't had a clue that this was going to happen when she came over here. "You don't trust yourself." She stepped back over to the bed and pulled him, too stunned to resist, to his feet. "Well, _I_ trust you."

She pulled him in for a kiss, her tongue sliding into his gaping mouth. Kim's mouth always tasted of sweet things.

Her breasts, soft and still swathed in satin, pressed against his chest Her free hand reached around and cupped his ass, pressing their hips together.

_Whoa!_

He took her by the shoulders and held her out at arm's length. "Hey, whoa, hold on, Kim! Wait a second!"

She rested her hands on his arms and looked up at him patiently, waiting, just as he'd said.

Ron took a moment to get his breathing under control, then said words he couldn't believe were actually coming out of his mouth: "KP, I don't think we should do this."

She shrugged. "I think we should."

_Doesn't she understand? Why won't she understand?_

He shook his head. "KP, no. It's not supposed to be like this."

She smiled up at him, too brightly, her eyes glistening. "No, it's not. You're right, Ron." She laughed, and the laughter was sadder than the tears. "You're absolutely right. It's not supposed to be like this at all. We're supposed to spend a lot longer on the explorations and substitutions and not-quites and everything-else-buts. It's supposed to happen on a special day – maybe after the Senior Ball, or maybe the day I turn eighteen, or maybe just before we head off to college. And it's supposed to be romantic, with the dinner and the dancing and the nice hotel room where we won't be disturbed, maybe in a tropical hideaway of some kind. There's supposed to be candlelight and music and it's all supposed to be wonderful and special." She paused, letting that sink in.

She _did_ understand. She'd just said everything he was thinking, better than he probably would have said it. Then why - ?

"But the way things are supposed to be got blown through a cinderblock wall in June," She went on. "And this is the way things need to be. You need to understand that I love you, and I'm not going to leave no matter how hard you try to make me. And since words don't seem to be making that much of an impression…"

"But they could, I think, if – "

She put the tips of her fingers to his lips. "Ron, _please_. I need this, too. I need to be beautiful again, if only just for a little while."

And that was enough. He couldn't, wouldn't let Kim's First Time be some sort of…sacrifice, just because he'd gone a little crazy because he couldn't deal. As hard as it had been, as much of a revolt against both his heart _and_ his teenage hormones to turn down the woman he loved when she just offered herself up on a silver platter like that, he could've done it. He could've stood firm against the Puppy Dog Pout itself.

But if they both needed it, because maybe words weren't quite enough for either of them?

There were worse reasons.

He relaxed his arms and drew her back in.

----

Kim had known that would be the right thing to say. Not that every word wasn't true. Now, now that she'd broken through his hard shell of "shoulds" and "can'ts", he pulled her into an embrace that started out gentle and became fierce as he was finally carried away by his need.

Need. Yes. She'd been right about that. Need. _Real_ need, not "baby-I-need-you" pop-song "need", which was really "baby I want you". This wasn't _want_, this wasn't _horny _– she would've been willing and able to help him with Horny, but that wouldn't have required such a drastic step – this wasn't even love. This was _Need_, need like hunger, like thirst, like exhaustion; need that made you sick and weak if you tried to deny it: the terrible heart-sickness of a boy – of a man – who'd spent months providing comfort to everyone around him while refusing to accept any comfort for himself.

He was shaking. But then, so was she. She couldn't believe that she was doing this – every word she'd said about how things were supposed to be had been true, and all of it would be gone after this. Everything would change.

But then, everything had changed before, so many times that the thought of anything staying the same was a joke. It had changed at "out there…in here…"; it had changed when they'd walked in the gym door at the prom, hand-in-hand; it had changed at the kiss. It had _really _changed during their heated explorations and experimentations in the tree house, on missions, wherever they could grab a rare moment's privacy. When she'd had her "just a friend's" hands on her breasts and his fingers inside her; when she'd asked her "just a friend" to drop his pants on purpose so she could see and touch what they held…that was when the whole concept of "just a friend" was gone forever. And if this was the last close-your-eyes-and-leap toward something else, well, everything had changed again when Shego had gone critical on Middleton High School –

And every word she'd said about how things needed to be had been true, too.

_Need_.

There was need in his shaking hands as they roamed across her body. He wasn't stroking or caressing – not just – he was making sure she was there, that she was real, touching because he needed the skin on skin.

_Need._

She tried not to think of what her skin must feel like under his hands – the hard ridges of the glass-cuts, the too-smooth of the burns – and forced her mind to lose itself in what his hands felt like on _her_ as they ran over her back, her neck, up through her hair, down her shoulders, over her hips, down her legs, then back up to her ass, squeezing and pressing their bodies together. Her own hands roamed a similar circuit, finding lean muscle where none had ever been before.

_Need._

As always, she was surprised how good his mouth tasted, considering the culinary horrors he shoveled into it. But it did, and she didn't want to break off their kiss, even to take a breath, but he was already kissing her face, her jaw, biting gently at her neck – but these weren't just kisses, any more than his touches had been caresses, this was the wolf putting his mouth on his mate's neck.

_Need_.

She helped him take off her bra (of course she helped him take off her bra, the first time a makeout session had gone that far he'd asked if it was locked, sometime soon they so needed to spend a whole afternoon in the treehouse just doing bra-unfastening drills), and he started kissingsuckinglickingstroking and she couldn't hold in a moan.

He didn't need any help getting her panties off as he lay her down on the bed and kissed further down her torso. Sternum, belly, navel, waist –

Pause. Deep breath. Another. What was he doing?

A familiar smell reached her – a rich, earthy, musk. The smell _should_ be familiar – it was her own, and Ron seemed to like it, savoring it like a gourmet just before –

Oh.

Oh, God.

Lips. Tongue. Even teeth. Ron making sounds like he's _really_ enjoying his meal. A naco with extra cheese, maybe.

She wanted to laugh. She howled instead.

Oh, _God_.

Building. Tightening in her womb. Rising, building

Ohgod_OhGod**OHGOD!**_

She howled out and went limp, and then Ron was above her, poised, tip to lips, panting, flushed.

"Are you sure about this, KP? _Sure?_"

She was. Oh, she was. And even if she'd had a last moment's twinge of fear, all she had to do was look up into his eyes and see the

_Need!_

But he would back off, on the instant, if she showed any doubt. It might break his heart, that last tap of rejection, but he would. He was her good man, and she was absolutely safe in his hands.

But then, she wasn't the one who needed proof of that.

She wrapped one arm around his shoulders and cupped a buttcheek with her free hand and drew him down. And in.

Flinch. Freeze.

"Did I – "

"It's okay, keep going, it feels good now."

He did. And it did. She'd expected more pain. No big, obviously – everyone was different. Maybe it was because Ron had gotten her so ready. Or maybe it was because her idea of pain was completely different from that of the girls who'd told her how much it might hurt.

Ron didn't last long. She hadn't expected him to. She'd heard other stories – complaints, really – about other teenage boys out for their First, and she knew that he'd already acquitted himself with honor. But she looked up into his face and saw the tight-jawed strain there as he tried to hold back, and she knew that he couldn't last much longer and the last thing she wanted to hear was an apology, so

"It's okay, Ron, go ahead, I've had mine, take it, take it – "

And then it was his turn to howl. Roar, really – she'd never imagined that such a deep, lionish sound could come from Ronald Stoppable's narrow chest.

Then he collapsed. She'd heard stories about that, too. That was okay. Some other time, she might want to talk after, but this time, the whole point had been to give him some peace.

Peace. Yes. She lay like a lioness with her mate in the afternoon heat (but lions and lionesses…never mind); stroking his back, slick with summer-sweat; and let her own mind drift in the peace.

She understood now why her father had tried to keep her away from this.

Part of it was that he was afraid for her, of course. As well he should be. The fact that she was with someone she loved and trusted, and the fact that she was protected against pregnancy didn't make an act this powerful "safe" – just right. She didn't want to think what this could have been like if anything about it had been wrong.

That was the largest part – he probably thought it was the _only _part, or at least he told himself so. But there was more to it than that.

There had always been two men in her life, two representatives of the other half of the human race, two examples of MALE. Her father and Ron. Jim and Tim had come along too late to fill such a role – besides, as her younger siblings and prepubescent to boot, they were sexless as far as she was concerned.

She knew that she was lucky that both of her men were so thoroughly behind her, so supportive – that they believed in her so. She knew that there weren't many women who had that blessing.

Her father was…well, her father. He protected. He overprotected. He nurtured. He disciplined. He loved.

Ron…Ron was her first friend. Her best friend. Always there for her, annoying, helping, hindering, needing – almost more of a brother than her brothers. Then, things had changed. Pre-K through the Prom. Friendship to love.

And now, he was her mate. Other words would come later, but for now, there was only the fierce protectiveness, the feeling of peace, the feeling of belonging. Mate.

He knew her _taste_ now, for God's sake.

Her father must have known that when this day came, he would be supplanted. Leave mother and father and become one flesh, that was one of the oldest truths.

She couldn't blame him for being jealous of that, for wanting to keep her for a little while longer.

Ron started to shift above her, and she came out of her peaceful near-doze and was suddenly alert. Something was still unfinished, she somehow realized. There was something that she still needed to do.

Ron raised himself up on his arms, and looked down at her, and his eyes were as soft and open and vulnerable as she was – as she had somehow known he would be, known with a knowing that was older than she was, older than her mother or grandmothers, as old as the first days of women and their mates.

He opened his mouth to say something, but she spoke first. And just as she had in Drakken's lair, she said the one right, true thing she could say, the thing he needed most to hear:

"There. Now nothing can take me away from you."

He froze with his mouth hanging open, staring down at her. Then his eyes slowly filled with tears. His mouth started to work as he tried to say something, and he blinked hard.

It didn't work. A tear dripped on her face. He reached out and wiped it away, but it was quickly replaced by another.

Then, the terrible, long drought of that summer ended as the rains finally came, and Ron collapsed back into her arms.

He cried like a hurt little boy, his body heaved and convulsed by great, wracking sobs; the poisonous, festering infection in his heart finally lanced, breaking open and flowing.

It hurt. Oh, it hurt, but at last, at last…

Kim held him tight and stroked and patted his back and made comforting noises like she might do someday for a hurt little boy of her own:

"It's alright…it's alright, baby…shhh…I'm here…I'm here…"

Her mate was wounded, but she would tend him back to health, just as he had done for her. Another of the oldest truths.

----

Sensei returned to his body with a sigh of relief and weariness. Using his abilities to keep watch over the wielder of the Lotus Blade in a time of crisis was altogether necessary and proper. To continue watching now would be crass voyeurism.

The old man did not immediately rise from the lotus position in which he sat. Like all things of this world, he was mortal. Even the mountain beneath Yamanouchi would be worn down by time and wind, and his flesh was far less than mountain stone. His strength had been worn away to a whisper of the shout it had once been, and he could no longer do such things as Stoppable-san did without paying a heavy price.

That price, in this case, was a bone-deep, arthritic fatique that left him unable to rise to his feet without aid . He would summon Yori in a few minutes, but until then, he contemplated all he had seen in recent months.

The rest of the world tended to dismiss Stoppable-san as merely Possible-san's "sidekick", of no consequence in his own right. Unimportant and incapable of great deeds. Even now that Possible-san was actively campaigning on his behalf, spreading the truth across the media, the world's attention remained focused on the glorious heroine.

Sensei admitted to himself that he had perhaps made the opposite mistake. It was only natural that he'd done so – Stoppable-san wielded the Lotus Blade and the magic that Sensei's own order practiced. His greatness was visible in a form that Sensei had expected to see. That made it easy to assume that Stoppable-san was the true Chosen One, and that Possible-san, however great and heroic a warrior she might be, was merely another one of his teachers.

Only natural. But a mistake nonetheless.

Both of them had been grievously wounded in their greatest strengths. And yet, they had overcome. When Possible-san's body had been shattered, Stoppable-san had become her, and battled their physical foes. When Stoppable-san's heart had been scarred to hardness, Possible-san had become him, and set him on the path of healing.

Clearly, their destinies were intertwined: each necessary; neither greater than the other; their oppositions causing not conflict, but balance, and creating a whole that was greater than the sum of its parts.

He had missed this.

The Unshaper had not.

Had it simply recognized that they were the closest thing this world might offer in terms of a threat and tried to destroy them with sudden, overwhelming force? Of course it had done that, but was that all? If it had killed one or both of them in the battle in June, its purpose would have been accomplished. The battle to come would have ended before it had begun. But did that mean that the attack had simply failed? Or had their survival been part of a deeper plan?

As a warrior, Sensei could not help but be concerned by their mercy. To pass up the single moment of vulnerability in an opponent of such power; to leave her with the ability to counterattack in the future – it seemed decidedly imprudent. And yet prudence was not always wisdom: as the great sage Gandalf said in that remarkable Western story, "Not even the very wise can see all ends." Sensei allowed himself the conceit of considering himself one of the very wise, but the only end he could see clearly was the disaster that would have befallen if Stoppable-san's rage had been allowed to fester and grow.

Earlier, he had thought how he could no longer do such things as Stoppable-san did without paying a price. The truth was more extreme: to the best of his knowledge, no one had ever done such things – ever used the Mystic Monkey Power – as Stoppable-san had. He wouldn't have believed it possible to survive such a thing. He was truly the Chosen One, but even so, the depth of his rage must have been terrifying. For that rage to corrupt that power would also accomplish the Unshaper's purpose. The battle to come would have ended before it began.

Had that been the Unshaper's plan? Had it purposefully allowed its servant to grow weak, hoping that Stoppable-san would kill her in her vulnerability? Was it willing to sacrifice its Queen to ensure Checkmate?

Did it even think in such ways? Was it a creature of diabolical cunning or simple, primal destruction?

And surely, it was not the _only_ force that had watched them and acted over the course of this terrible summer. Human choices and will had played their role, as they always did – Drakken healing his worst enemy, the hero Shego had once been asserting herself. Still, he couldn't help but wonder if there had been more at work. The gods testing and preparing their champions, perhaps, tempering them for what was to come?

No doubt, the champions in question would hate the idea of being manipulated so.

He rang the bell to summon Yori. There was much to be done, but he needed some rest before he attempted to do it. He was at least wise enough to realize that.

In the moments before Yori arrived, he pondered just a little further.

So many questions. So few of which would ever be answered. Such was the fate of mortals. Whatever the truth, everything had worked out exactly as it had to so that hope, however faint it might be, remained.

They had a chance. Thank all the gods and bodhisattvas, they had a chance.


	9. Epilogue: Distant Thunder

Sheila didn't struggle as a conical device that looked much like an old-fashioned hair dryer from a beauty parlor lowered onto her head. It would have been surprising if she had: she was restrained, sedated, and – although this was not electroshock treatment and they had no reason to think she'd so much as twitch – fitted with a mouth guard.

Global Justice took their deal with Drakken very seriously (if only because his surprising productivity would turn from all the useful little devices he was cranking out to an enormously destructive rescue attempt if he got even a hint that Shego was in danger), but they weren't taking any chances. As treatment went, they were feeling around in the dark on this one…a dark that unquestionably had monsters hiding in it.

Dr. Cyrus Bortel frowned as the scanner helmet locked into place. "Once again, I must protest, Dr. Director," he said, looking up at the woman beside him. "The Mental Diagnosticator is still highly experimental."

The one-eyed woman didn't look away from the two-way mirror that allowed her to watch the room where Shego was being tested. Since he was standing on her blind side, Bortel knew that she was all but ignoring him by not turning her head. "Duly noted," she said. "But she knew that when she volunteered."

Bortel snorted. He was this woman's elder, and he was not one of her subordinates. His politeness was at _his_ discretion. "You _say_ she volunteered. But even if she did, did you bother to tell her the full risks? This is still braintap technology!"

"Doctor, you build mind-control devices and then sell them through Internet auctions. The last thing I need from you is a lecture on ethics."

Time to be both more discrete and more polite. Drakken wasn't the only scientist to ever make a deal with Global Justice, and the statute of limitations hadn't expired on the Weapons Trafficking charges for the Moodulator incident.

Dr. Bortel sat down and shut up. but Dr. Director apparently didn't mind explaining herself once she'd quelled the rebellion in the ranks.

"Shego is too powerful, too dangerous, and too unstable to take the time for normal psychiatry, Doctor," she said. "We need a diagnosis yesterday and we need to start treatment the day before. We tried the old-fashioned shortcut, but the telepath who tried it still hasn't woken up. Thus the artificial means."

Bortel nodded and grunted, but then what she'd said truly sank in, and his head snapped toward her. "You didn't tell me that Miss Shego has psionic defenses!"

"She doesn't. That's why we're so anxious to find out just what our telepath saw in there."

Understandably, Bortel was a good bit less anxious to turn to the Diagnosticator's monitor and hit "run". Still, he did it, and the scan commenced with a few flashing lights and a hum of machinery.

It was a fact of Elizabeth Director's life that her field of vision was somewhat limited. She chose to focus what she had on the unconscious superhuman on the other side of the mirror, rather than the somewhat petty little man beside her.

This was probably the course of wisdom – after all, given Shego's constantly-shifting metabolism, who knew how long the sedatives would remain effective? And who knew what kind of mood she'd wake up in? But it did mean that she didn't see it when Dr. Bortel's eyes widened.

"Doctor Director?" He asked in a strained voice.

"Yes?"

"You told me that the most important thing was to confirm or refute Drakken's hypothesis about her having two personalities, correct?"

She nodded, but still didn't turn toward him. "That's correct, Doctor. We were hoping, if that was the case, that we could eliminate the Shego personality entirely, or at least integrate the two."

"Actually, it's starting to appear that Shego _is_ the integrated personality."

She finally turned, raising the eyebrow over her functional eye. "I beg your pardon?"

"It appears that this 'Sheila' may actually have been the original personality. She's so limited because Shego has spent years using her as a psychological wastebasket: attributing every 'weak' trait to her until the poor girl is a caricature of whoever she used to be, a mere collection of 'weaknesses'."

That explained why 'Sheila' could only speak Spanish when she arrived at Global Justice, rather than knowing all the languages that Shego knew. It also explained why she was learning English – and those other languages – so quickly: she wasn't _learning_ them, she was _remembering_ them. What it _didn't_ explain was why Shego considered Spanish to be a weakness.

"For some reason, she's recently begun to 'grow back' – "

"Doctor, this is fascinating, but you started out talking about Shego."

"Yes, yes. It appears that Shego is actually the integrated personality, between poor Sheila and a _third_ one that I've just discovered."

"Third?"

"Yes, I –" He turned back to the monitor. And then he froze.

"Doctor Bortel?" She prompted.

"My God…" he whispered as he looked at whatever was on the monitor. Then the lenses of his glasses cracked with a sudden, sharp report.

Startled, Dr. Director hesitated. In that moment, the Diagnosticator's monitor collapsed in on itself.

Dr. Bortel rose to his feet and turned toward her. Although none of the glass from his broken lenses had left their frames, there was blood running from his eyes like tears. Behind him, the control panel for the Diagnosticator continued to collapse in upon itself.

"You waste what little time you have left," he said in a flat, hollow voice. "Go home, Elizabeth Director. Find a man. Find a woman. Get laid, get drunk, get high – do whatever will give your last hours some pleasure. Your army of toy soldiers can't stop the End from coming. Nothing can."

Silence.

Then he grinned. An awful grin, with blood on his teeth. When he spoke again, it was in the same hollow, oracular tone, but the flatness had been replaced with a horrible, chummy merriment. "And incidentally, you might as well just put an overdose of morphine into Janice Monroe's IV drip right now. Spare everyone a Terri Schiavo situation. She's not going to wake up."

Dr. Director just had time to realize that she had never mentioned the wounded telepath's name to Bortel before he fell over dead.

A massive stroke would later be ruled to be Bortel's cause of death. Or rather, fourteen strokes if one counted the individual blood vessels that had burst in his brain.

The crumbled pile of rust and corrosion that had once been the Diagnosticator was a bit more difficult to explain.

**Curtain. End Act One. Please return after a short intermission, when we shall begin Act Two: Bleeding Through.**


End file.
